In Scrum, a person who wears many hats, including coach, facilitator, mentor, and problem solver, when working with a Scrum Team. The Scrum Master (SM) seeks to establish psychological safety, ensuring they team members are collaborating effectively, helping them deliver business value at a consistent, sustainable pace, while also helping team members recognize and celebrate successes. The SM also acts […]
In Scrum, a person who acts as the central point of product leadership at the team level, and as such, can articulate the voice of the customer. Key responsibilities of a Product Owner (PO) include bringing their business and domain expertise to bear to ensure that product vision, goals, and scope are clear, setting the priority for work that a […]
An individual with the authority to set the direction for a product, and often a family of products, using analytical methods such as market research, trend analysis, structured or unstructured interviews, and other forms of interaction with individual customers or a sample of the customer population. As such, Product Managers set strategy and vision for the product(s) under their purview, […]
A detailed biography or profile of a fictitious user of a product, which is concise and visual, while also being representative of a group of users. A common layout for a persona is on a single page, including a photograph or cartoon, a hypothetical name, along with social or professional details and areas of interest. Because products are often intended […]
A mathematical method to determine how many lines of communication exist between one node (person) and every other node in a group of people. A way to apply the Permutation Formula is to show that as team size increases, the lines of communication increase geometrically, to the point where effective 1:1 communication and team collaboration becomes more difficult and less […]
A cyclical method of performing work and receiving feedback on the work, to improve products and processes. Plan-Do-Check-Act incorporates feedback loops to reinforce an empirical process, which focuses on inspection and adaptation instead of following a comprehensive, fully defined plan, where that plan is established up front and adhered to regardless of the outcomes or discoveries along the way. The […]
A practice that originated with eXtreme Programming (XP), where two people work closely together, and frequently switch roles, with one writing code (the Driver), and the other reviewing and thinking of ways to test the code (the Navigator). Also, in a less formal sense, pairing can occur any time two team members work together such that the overall quality of […]
The notion in psychology that the human brain is capable of maintaining 7 +/- 2 pieces of information at a time for immediate recall. Miller’s Law has important implications in areas such as Customer Experience and User Experience. A concept similar to what’s behind Miller’s Law also applies to how many communications paths are realistic among a group of people, […]
Many teams make their work visible on a physical or electronic board, such the movement (flow) of work items toward done is apparent. On Kanban Boards, each work item is represented by a token, such as a Post-it-Note (on a physical board), or a rectangular digital object (in electronic tools), providing metadata about the work item, such as what it […]
Activities that seek to continuously improve multiple organizational functions and involve many employees, from the executive level to the level of individual contributors. As such, Kaizen applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organizational boundaries into areas such as the supply chain. The foundational level of Kaizen in a Scrum context is the Sprint Retrospective, such that […]