Sunday, June 28, 2015

The official definition of planning poker in Scrum...

... doesn’t exist!

Well okay – if you read my last piece this was no surprise after the title, I guess...

There are definitions of planning poker like the ones on wikipedia or the popular description from mountain goat – But you won‘t find planning poker in the original Scrum resources. Neither in the book, nor in the paper, and not the Scrum guide.

You also might want to reconsider if you really need planning poker for your estimation. There is a lot of thought about not needing estimation at all (not freeing one from the need for analysis, though!) and there are other options like magic estimation (sometimes also called affinity estimation)

till next time
  Michael Mahlberg

Sunday, June 14, 2015

What’s the official definition for story-types in Scrum?

the quick answer is:

There Is No Such Thing!

Have a look at the official scrum guide.
Have a look at the original (IMHO) Scrum book by Schwaber and Beedle.
Have a look at the OOPSLA'95 article that introduced a broader audience to Scrum.

None of them mention stories!

Stories are mentioned in the definition of XP – on the original XP-Wiki as well as in the 1st edition of the defining book.

There is a lot more to know about stories of course – Mike Cohn wrote a Book on writing user stories and defined one of the best known formats for writing stories (although there are many other opinions and additions)and Jeff Patton popularized the idea of story-mapping in a very approachable way.

But those are not things that Scrum defines, requires or in any other way endorses. Those are all additions by the community that might fit your case. Or not. Give it a try. Evaluate cautiously. Pick what works for you.

till next time
  Michael Mahlberg