In this interview, Jeff Patton discusses the Product Owner role and points out that Agile has never been very focused on the customer. While Agile development excels at “delivery”, it struggles to support “discovery” (i.e. defining what the customer really needs). Also discussed are techniques such as Lean Startup and story maps and the importance of defining business value in an Agile context.
Most new Agile teams transition from hours based estimates to relative estimation using story points, but do we even need estimates at all?
Several members of the Agile community describe different styles for expressing user story tests and the testing of an entire theme.
Active Architecture is a type of documentation that helps to bridge the gap between User Stories in Agile Projects and large design deliverables on Traditional projects. It leverages the power and simplicity of User Stories. Unlike traditional design documentation that defines the structure or passive state of the design, Active Architecture defines the actions or active state of the design.
Fixed price contracts are evil - this is what can often be heard from agilists. On the other hand those contracts are reality which many agile teams have to face. But what if we try to tame it instead of fighting against it? How can a company execute this kind of contract using agile practices to achieve better results with lower risk? This article will try to answer those questions.
Glenn Saqui and Jon Mullen present the details of the development environment and the process they are using at Sky.com: selecting team members, work area, dealing with continuous integration, tools, how they pair, weekly and daily process, story cards and how they are used, and the production environment.
While some agilists consider only user stories as necessary, Gerard Meszaros believes that we need to find the proper balance between upfront planning and decision deferring. In this presentation, Meszaros explains what should be going on behind the curtains from product conception to the user stories backlog.
Jeff Patton describes the different ways Agile teams deal with users and then digs in deep into story mapping. Jeff says: "For me, the story mapping thing is going back to using the story as a genuine conversation to actually drive understanding of the system, not as what I've seen it become – molecular conversation about the details of a particular feature and how we're going to test it.
In this interview with Jeff Patton at Agile 2008, he talks about three strategies that can help product owners do their job more effectively by embracing the inherent uncertainty in all software development. Namely they are understanding the ultimate goals of the project, delaying decisions until the last responsible moment, and scaling up by building quality.
