The benefits of getting a Technical Communicator to be part of your agile team In this blog post I discuss how beneficial it can be working with a Technical Communicator (TC) in your agile team — often known as a Technical Writer, Documentation Specialist, or Content Writer. This post is based on my own experience; I was a technical writer for over 10 years until chance gave me an opportunity to extend my skill set and direct me to a new found passion of all things agile. What is a Technical Communicator? Tech Communicators create support documentation for end users using plain English pr ..read more

How to share the load of user documentation.I recently presented a webinar about agile technical communication with TechCommNZ (The Agile Technical Communicator). During the question and answer session, I got a lot of inquires as to how best work with other collaborators on end user documentation. This inspired me to write a blog article or two about it. In this first blog article, I will discuss the differences between system and end user documentation and take a look at some techniques on optimizing user documentation as a team. Agile Manifesto core valueOne of the core values of the Agile ..read more

How to become a great scrum Master.In my many years working in the practice of being Agile, I have founds that myself and many of my counterparts have one thing in common, always finding ways to constantly trying to improve ourselves. In this blog, I explore some common attributes that many of us Scrum Masters use to help master our craft by helping others find ways to be the shining light for their teams. Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash Run with honesty and integrityAs a professional Scrum Master, it is important that you remain impartial in all your dealings with you ..read more

The main benefit of Scrum is solving problems as a teamIn this blog, we explore why it is so valuable. Solving problems with scrumIn more traditional project management frameworks such as Waterfalls, it it uses the traditional constraints of time, cost and scope to manage projects, however, these are all fixed. A very effective framework for controlled environments. However, problems require more flexibility when addressing change. Photo by Olav Ahrens Røtne on Unsplash In Scrum, scope can be flexible because you focus on building what is is most valuable. Teams solv ..read more

My favourite retrospectives are two classics, and never get boring. The StarfishThe Starfish retrospective is a great way to find out what a scrum team can change about the way they work during a sprint. Starfish Retrospective - my go to! How to run Draw a star on a whiteboard or flip chart and label the five sections:  Start: What does the team want to start doing during the next sprint (or next project) to improve the way they work together or deliver products?  Stop: What are the things that do not bring value to the team and should be stopped before the next sprint o ..read more

Finding out what is important to your project is all about realizing its value to the project and the customer.In this article we explore the value of teams perform a useful technique called Value Stream Mapping, in it we find out what value is, what a value stream is and how mapping value streams are important to uncover the value to a project, stakeholders and your customers. What is value? Value is what's important to customers. What value is depends on your project and what you want it to achieve. However, your customers mostly because it's what they appreciate and are willing to pay for ..read more

The Agile MoSCoW method.No not the city! But the unique and cool way you can prioritize requirements apart from sequencing, ordering or weighting. Also known as the MoSCoW method or MoSCoW analysis. Photo by Alexander Smagin on Unsplash | The real Moscow. What is MoSCOW?Simply put, it is a method used in a project to help stakeholders define value by conveying a simple approach to understand the significance of a number of initiatives linked to a project or release. The acronym is broken down into four categories. 1. Must havesThese are non-negotiable product needs that are mandatory for the ..read more

Road mapping a successful agile project Photo by Aurélien - Wild Spot on Unsplash Part Getting ready to work Set the vision for your project Vision is map to get your destination Product owner set this up Mvp: just enough to get out the door to get small amount of users to use it Faster to you get feedback Mvp minimises scope creep and ability to test waters Then time to decompose mvp into feature pieces Team must fully understand functions Identify themes through a broad grouping of work Themes help trigger ideas on what needs to be developed to meet mvp Once themes identified you can the ..read more

Is to fail fast.In Agile, it is Okay to fail, the key is to do it effectively. Simply put, when you try new things, you need to experiment ideas, try and test to see if they work. If they do not, learn from it, retry or move on. Here's how. How to fail fast The secret is in the Scrum framework... Photo by Ian Kim on Unsplash Start with the Scrum framework First, lets look at a very high level the scrum framework, and how failing fast fits in. Product owner prioritizes the backlog. Every sprint (let's say two weeks or so) your team develops and tests solutions for the backlog items until the ..read more