{codesqueeze} » Whiteboard Wednesdays

Whiteboard Wednesday: Why Team Velocity Slows Down

Max Pool — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:46:58 +0000

There are tons of reasons why your team actually starts to slow down but in this video I outline a few of the biggest:

Communication Cost
Process Cost
Technical Debt

What are your biggest reasons for your team’s velocity slowdown?

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Whiteboard Wednesday – “Dipping” Into New Year’s Resolutions

Max Pool — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:48:34 +0000

Sorry for the belated video – I have been trying to get it out for a day or more. Anyone that follows me on Twitter knows that I have been battling with YouTube and the new 16:9 HD features.

This video is a touch long-winded for such a simple message (you can tell I still hadn’t woke up yet), but it is more of a self realization of what are my sticking points in achieving goals. What’s your “dip”? I am sure I have some more that I am not aware of and hearing others’ might help!

PS – You can watch this video in HD!

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Whiteboard Wednesday: The Probability of Getting Tasks Done

Max Pool — Wed, 14 May 2008 07:47:27 +0000

The ability to get everything on your task list done becomes less and less probable with the number of tasks and you load into your week or iteration. The simple math of compounding probabilities is a good analogy to prove this point.

At the end of this video, what I should have said (for clarity) was that you should under promise and over deliver. Accomplishing that alone, there is no need for fancy math as you have already learned the lesson that the analogy is attempting to deliver.

Like I said in the video, please check out Leading Answers as it is a great website with a lot of great information.

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Whiteboard Wednesday: Keeping Teams Small

Max Pool — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:10:18 +0000

Keeping your teams small may seem obvious, but it really is necessary to keep a group of people motivated towards solving a common goal.

Mike over at Leading Answers has more in-depth break down of the communication overload that can occur, but the 2 Pizza concept that 37 Signals and FastCompany talk about is a great way to ensure team sizes are small and in check.

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Response To Effective Communication Channels

Max Pool — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 07:54:56 +0000

A few weeks ago I posted the Whiteboard Wednesday – Effective Communication Channels. Mike McCaffrey had some good insights that my thoughts were only half baked and that I needed to see it from both sides of the coin.

Like the video says, the message still doesn’t change – we need to be cognizant of the channels of communication that we use. However, depending on who’s time we are attempting to optimize the channels that we speak on may be different for both syndicate and consumer.

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Whiteboard Wednesday: Effective Communication Channels

Max Pool — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:22:39 +0000

Wow! I could have been a big hypocrite because I almost did this topic as a written post, but of course it should be a face to face whiteboard…

Be sure to check out Scott Ambler’s agile communication article as it was the basis for this whiteboard discussion.

So in summary, be sure to force conversations towards being more rich in nature and your time will be more maximized:

Face to Face – Whiteboard
Face to Face – Conversation
Telephone Conversation
Email Threads
Documentation / Wikis

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Whiteboard Wednesday: Using Your Bug Tracker For Estimation Tracking

Max Pool — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 07:26:00 +0000

As I mentioned in the video above, my team does their bug tracking with Jira, and because it is flexible enough to add in custom user defined fields, I added the Points drop down list. After that, I simply created some reports using their pre-canned charts and wam-bam I have my burn up charts.

Just a few additional hints when attempting to leverage your issue tracker to help with estimation analysis:

Make sure you keep 1:1 relationships with issues/estimations
Split issues into weekly iterations (or sprint)
If you cant create dashboards, learn how to export the data so you can still use it
Track everything – completion rate, completion velocity, growth velocity, and project completion date

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Whiteboard Wednesday: Benefits of Point Estimation

Max Pool — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 07:55:18 +0000

This Whiteboard Wednesday talks about the benefits of doing your software estimation in points rather than in time. As I explain in the video, there is a great game called – Planning Poker. Here are some links on Planning Poker:

Let’s Play Planning Poker! – Jeff did a great job of explaining this in detail (very similar to this whiteboard)
Crisp.se sells Planning Poker decks
You can also play Planning Poker online

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Whiteboard Wednesday: The ROI of Testing

Max Pool — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 07:27:47 +0000

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Whiteboard Wednesday – Building Slices, Growing Layers

Max Pool — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 02:17:54 +0000

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