A group of 17 software development practitioners met in February 2001, at The Lodge at the Snowbird ski resort in Utah, and before concluding their meeting, they agreed on a core set of values and principles. That set of values and principles has come to be known as the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Among...Read More

In software development, when writing code, it’s important to look for ways to make small improvements, such as by removing unnecessary spaces, adding or clarifying comments, improving logic structures, and getting rid of nested loops. In short, when refactoring, the idea is to look for any anti-patterns, or “bad design smells,” that make code harder...Read More

In Scrum, one of the most important outcomes from a Sprint Planning session is for members of the Scrum Team to agree on a statement that summarizes what they intend to achieve during the iteration (Sprint). When deciding how to articulate that statement, or Sprint Goal, Scrum teams choose a subset of work items from...Read More

There is a mathematical formula which stipulates that it is possible to predict how much time it will take from start to finish to deliver a product, based on the production rate and how much simultaneous Work-In-Progress (WIP) exist in the system. The formula is named after an MIT professor named John Little, and it...Read More

Humans have a general cognitive bias to be overly optimistic when they have low ability or experience with completing a task, and overly pessimistic when they have high ability or experience with completing a task. This phenomenon is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, and it was named after the psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger,...Read More

It has been shown that when humans are aware that they are being observed, they change their behavior. This phenomenon, which is known as the the Hawthorne Effect, is named after an early-20th-century study that was conducted by Western Electric at their Hawthorne Works location in Cicero, Illinois. During the study, various changes were made...Read More

When it comes to human behavior, whenever we baseline success against a particular measure, the efficacy of that measure tends to decline. This idea, known as Goodhart’s Law, is named after Charles Goodhart, an economist and former advisor to the Bank of England. Thus if we are working within a system of rewards and punishments,...Read More

A way of expressing a reasonably small unit of work that needs to be done to meet a particular customer or user need and thereby provide business value. User stories are articulated in such a way that they are understandable for both business people and technical people. It is a common practice to include a...Read More

In Scrum, a fixed timebox (iteration) that repeats during a product development effort, where each iteration cannot exceed one month in duration. Throughout a Sprint, a team focuses on completing work items,  to deliver business value, such that there is a steady flow of work to Done. The work items that the team completes during...Read More

In Scrum, an event (meeting) that takes place at the end of an iteration (Sprint), where one or more Scrum Teams engage with stakeholders to inspect the work that was done during the Sprint, and get feedback on that work. A significant portion of the Sprint Review consists of a demonstration of working product, emphasizing...Read More