I often wind up helping groups understand some aspects of agility and Scrum. One common topic that seems to confuse groups is user stories. I want to go over several shapes they tend to appear in and close with my desired one. Hopefully, you’ll see t...

User stories are ubiquitous these days as the method of representing work that development teams need to do. Yet, very few groups ever really understand them well enough to get much value out of them. While I still think user stories are an excellent...

There are a lot of prioritization techniques that exist, and it’s worth getting comfortable with a handful of them. Each one has strengths and weaknesses, so having a few you can use rounds out your ability to prioritize. One of my “Superpowers,” so...

I've been in a lot of organizations that in their adoption of Scrum, they transition project managers to becoming product owners. This is a trend I continue to see, and I thought I'd explore some of those common trends here. The heart of a project ma...

I've often felt like one of my natural talents or superpowers is how I prioritize features for products. Now, I know it is easy for anyone to feel that way, but there is a very sharp contrast between the backlogs I create and what most others create....

When an idea for a new project gains steam and people gather to decide what exactly it is to do, there are many options to choose from to help with initial scoping. One technique I use quite regularly is known as Impact Mapping. Why Impact Mapping? C...

It might seem as though I’m late to the show writing about a Lean Canvas, but I’ve been using them for years, and I continually find my clients are unaware of their existence. They’re a wonderful tool for rapidly creating options and representing a p...

There is a lot that I can say about the magic of breaking work down into workable chunks, but I want to focus on one particular lens in this article. Imagine there is a product that needs to add a feature. This feature will require changes to the fro...

If you've spent any amount of time in the software world, you bump into what is sometimes called the magic quadrants. You'll most often see this as an effort/impact activity. I want to share two ways I use this little technique when helping groups be...

I’m not a fan of most roadmaps or their usage, but so what? They are a near-universal tool in many companies that awkwardly try to communicate what is going on and their timelines. Despite them turning into vague work-breakdown schedules, there is so...