Agile Best Practice

Agile is about being flexible and always getting better—essential for delivering great software. But when scaling agile across teams in a program, being adaptable and flexible is easier said than done. In this post, we'll dig into the ins and outs of agile program management to help you:

• Tackle common challenges
• Use metrics and feedback loops to keep improving
• Leverage leadership for the best chance of success

By identifying some clear and actionable steps that you can start implementing now, you’ll improve your approach to program management and make your software delivery smoother and more efficient.

Overcoming Common Challenges in Agile Program Management

From dealing with dependencies to managing stakeholder expectations and balancing speed with quality, here are some challenges you might face now.

Dealing with Dependencies

Dependencies are a necessary part of working on complex software, and they need to be managed carefully to avoid disrupting delivery schedules.

Identifying dependencies early is key to keeping things running smoothly. By spotting potential bottlenecks early, like during PI Planning, we can nip them in the bud before they turn into major headaches, and:

• allocate resources more effectively
• streamline communication across teams
• keep everyone on the same page with a shared timeline.

Maintain clear communication channels and regular alignment meetings to address dependencies swiftly and efficiently. This helps everything stay in sync, and hopefully avoids last-minute 'surprises', for a more reliable delivery.

Managing Stakeholder Expectations

We can't deliver complex software on our own, so ensuring that our colleagues are informed and onboard is critical. Managing expectations across a large program is a complex challenge, but you'll be off to a great start if you are able to keep communication consistent:

• Regular Updates: Keep the lines of communication open and honest, and provide frequent updates to keep everyone in the loop.
• Be Transparent: Maintain a central source of truth for project information that everyone has access to, ensuring that objectives, milestones and priorities are clear.
• Set Realistic Expectations: Avoid over-promising and stay realistic about what can be achieved.
• Prioritize and Manage Feedback: Inevitably, there will be changes in priorities or feedback from stakeholders. It's important to have a process for managing these requests and ensuring they align with the program goals.

Agile tools that offer clear visibility into objectives, dependencies, and progress, can be the bridge between your development teams and stakeholders in leadership and other parts of the business.

By focusing on these areas, you’re not just managing expectations—you’re making sure everyone is part of the process.

The bridge between development teams and leadership, with objectives, milestones and dependencies all in one. Watch a demo or try for yourself.

Easy Agile Programs

FEATURES & PRICING

Balancing Speed with Quality

In a perfect world, we would all deliver amazing software that our customers love, at lightning speed. But the reality is that balancing time-to-market with quality is an ongoing challenge.

Agile practices like organizing work to deliver incrementally are part of the solution; they help identify problems early and deliver in a way that makes more sense than following a Gantt chart until the timelines blow out and it all falls over.

So while agile won’t make your development teams type faster, it can help them, as well as your colleagues in Product, and QA, learn what works faster, and how they can collaborate better to deliver work with quality.

Metrics and Feedback Loops

Metrics can be a powerful tool in agile program management. Velocity, burn-down charts, cycle time, lead time, and dependency reports can give valuable insights into how our teams are performing and how our projects are progressing.

• Velocity: Long-term trends help us understand team commitment over time, and estimate what can be achieved going into a sprint.
• Burn-down charts: Valuable for gauging progress throughout execution and spotting barriers to delivery.
• Cycle time: Uncover inefficiencies or bottlenecks where tasks are likely to get delayed or stuck.
• Lead time: Use the difference between an expected lead time and the actual lead time, as a starting point for understanding where delivery is being held up.
• Dependency reports: Use a snapshot of dependencies in your program to understand how teams are dependent on each other and where the biggest risks are.

Monitoring these metrics will give you a clearer picture of where work is progressing well and where you might need to make adjustments. Think of them as your project’s health check-up; a temperature check that can improve the predictability of your release.

With powerful dependency reports, you can identify bottlenecks, streamline communication, and keep your projects on track.

Easy Agile Programs

FEATURES & PRICING

Establishing Effective Feedback Loops

Feedback loops are integral to delivering software with market fit. Sprint reviews and retrospectives offer teams the opportunity to reflect on their performance, identify areas for improvement, and make necessary adjustments. DevOps practices like continuous integration further ensure that the code is consistently tested and integrated, reducing the risk of significant issues going unnoticed.

Using metrics and feedback loops allows teams to deliver software with greater predictability and transparency. Applying these practices consistently across a program means that you're better able to manage the planning and execution of work to deliver complex software to your customers in a predictable way.

The Role of Leadership in Agile Program Management

Great leadership is key to building an agile culture. It's not just about making decisions from the top; it's understanding team needs and clearing the way for them to be effective. But old 'command and control' habits are difficult to break.

As a program manager, you're the glue that connects the strategic vision of leadership with the hands-on work of development teams. Keep those communication lines open and reciprocal, so everyone understands the business goals and the strategic importance of their tasks, as well as progress and barriers to execution.

• Use agile tools to maintain a central source of truth, to give everyone a clear view of project progress and potential roadblocks.
• Foster a culture of regular feedback and continuous improvement. This proactive approach helps tackle challenges head-on and keeps everyone aligned with business objectives.
• Promote transparency and adaptability to help teams quickly adjust to changing priorities.

Keep these things in mind to help you plan and deliver with confidence. You may be the glue that holds it all together, but you can't be everything for everyone. Enlist help where you need it, and encourage an open and transparent culture where strategic priorities are understood, and everyone can see how the focus of their work contributes to the bigger picture.

An Agile Approach to Change

Taking a new approach to program management doesn’t need to be daunting. Once you’ve identified the changes that make sense for you, take an agile approach and implement incrementally. Every small change you make adds up over time and can lead to measurable improvement.

How Easy Agile Programs Can Help

Easy Agile Programs is a Jira integration that supports agile program management. It is a central source of truth for the issues, milestones, team objectives, and dependencies that make up a program of work.

Dependency maps and reports help you see the nature of cross-team dependencies clearly, so you and your teams can reorganize to avoid roadblocks that would otherwise blow out timelines with unexpected delays.

Easy to set up and tightly integrated with Jira, Easy Agile Programs supports scaled team planning and execution so you have greater confidence in delivering great software as each program increment begins.

There's a lot in common between a Product Manager and the executive president of a professional sports club. Don't buy it? Well, you should 😋, and here's why.

• Both are experts in their businesses.
• They both know what it takes to win. 🏆
• They're great leaders of their teams.

Stay tuned because this article will give you a grasp of how unique the product management role is. You'll learn what their responsibilities are and more.

And if you landed a job opportunity as Product Manager, we'll give you a hand with mastering your craft. 🥇

But first things first: defining the role. And once you know this, we’ll move on to exploring their tasks, unique characteristics, and the challenges they face.

What's a product manager?

For context, let's start with product management’s role in PI (Product Increment) Planning.

According to our Guide to PI Planning, the Product Manager must understand the customer needs and validate solutions against those needs. That’s the starting point and foundation for their role. But that's still generic. 🤔

The Product Manager is THE product expert. That makes them the best-equipped team member to make strategic decisions about the product. These decisions affect the work of a lot of people in a company.

The Product Manager is a product visionary and strategist. They monitor and analyze the market competition. That's how they define a unique product vision and product strategy. Their ultimate goal is to add unique value to the market based on customer needs.

The Product Manager decides what products or product features to build and in what order. This means they prioritize new products or new features in an existing product. Defining a product vision and a product strategy is intimately related to prioritization. They must do their best effort to maximize both customer value and business value. Not an easy challenge!

The Product Manager leads the teams responsible for developing a new product or improving an existing one. They usually work across cross-functional teams, so leading them demands a great deal of organization from the Product Manager. Plus, they need the ability to bridge, communicate with, and supervise engineering, marketing, sales, and customer support staff.

The Product Manager participates in all stages of product development, from planning and conception to launch or release. But what tasks do they do?

The product manager's tasks

You already know some of the product management tasks. But here's a comprehensive list of product management tasks:

• Understand, identify, and, if necessary, represent customer pain points and business challenges.
• Manage the process of generating new ideas for products or features, and decide which ideas to move forward with.
• Describe a product vision, and align all teams with that vision, especially in large companies.
• Create and maintain the product roadmap.
• Design a strategy for product development.
• Limit the project scope.
• Rank features against the product strategy, business goals, customer value, and customer or user feedback.
• Specify the requirements for each feature.
• Define the launch or release process, which comprises phases and milestones.
• Manage dependencies within and between phases.
• Identify the deliverables and corresponding due dates for the cross-functional teams.
• Coordinate the activities of each team from product development until launching the product into the market.
• Validate product design and implementation.
• Ensure the successful launch or release of the product.

Now, are you working with Scrum? If so, you might be wondering about the differences between the Product Manager and the Product Owner.

Product managers vs. product owners

Although they may interchange tasks, they're distinct roles. In short, the latter works towards realizing the product vision and the product strategy that the first defines.

The Product Owner works more closely with the software development team. On the other hand, the Product Manager interfaces directly with customers, users, and partners.

Sometimes, when there's no Product Manager, the Product Owner steps into this role. However, in that case, there's little time to coordinate the work of all teams around the same product vision.

But regardless of whether there’s an existing Product Owner, there are key ingredients that make good and great Product Managers. Let's discuss that next.

What makes a great product manager?

The characteristics of a great Product Manager consist of technical skills and personality traits. So, besides technical skills, they should have a high EQ (emotional coefficient). This means:

• Showing customers and users empathy during any communication with them
• Developing trustworthy relationships with internal teams and external stakeholders
• Inspiring and motivating team members
• Discretely persuading people to take the necessary steps to achieve a common goal, which starts with listening to them
• Avoiding bias in the preference for solutions by being user-centric and ensuring that solutions answer user needs
• Managing stress and performing well under pressure
• Demonstrating the urgency of task completion without causing panic
• Knowing how to ask the best questions to the right people at the right time
• Delegating the power of decision-making by giving teams a methodology and criteria for escalating if needed
• Daring to confidently make strong statements about priorities, advocating for any of their decisions
• Having the courage to choose whom to favor with a decision, whether it’s engineering, marketing, or sales
• Not being afraid of changes such as defining a new product strategy for business growth
• Reading the emotions of customers, users, and internal team members, and capturing their concerns

If they tick all or most of the above, the Product Manager is on the way to being emotionally intelligent.

Typical results from an outstanding product manager

If the Product Manager has a high EQ, they'll be the best at:

• Growing teams to become high-performing
• Negotiating with customers, users, partners, and people from different departments
• Resolving conflicts that might get in the way of cross-functional teams that make successful products
• Getting more funds, top talent, and other kinds of support or resources
• Prioritizing according to customer pain points
• Making sure the development team knows users actually need the changes they're implementing
• Obtaining the best trade-offs between the different individuals and teams involved and interested in a product's development

Ultimately, customers will trust the Product Manager to fix problems with the product. Plus, engineers will accept going the extra mile to incorporate a microfeature on short notice. And if the Product Manager is always calm and cool, management will trust their work.

At this point, you know how personality matters to the success of the product management role. Next, discover how the type of product and its users also affect their work.

The right measure of technicality

The more complex a technical product is, the more experience the Product Manager should have with building similar products.

On the other hand, for a less complex technical product, experience with launching products and supporting customers is enough.

Summing up, the Product Manager knows how to talk with the users of a product and the customer. Additionally, they have at least a basic technical understanding of the product.

But wait! That's not all. Product Managers also do some magic when interacting with engineers and top management.

Connecting with engineers and top management is key

The Product Manager should establish, maintain, and manage a relationship with the engineering team and top management.

Relating to the engineers

The relationship between the Product Manager and the engineering team depends on the company's view of the product development process. And it can be done in three different ways:

1. The Product Manager hands the product requirements to the engineering team, which transforms them into technical requirements.
2. Engineers develop the product, which the Product Manager validates and sometimes monetizes.
3. The Product Manager and the engineering team collaborate closely to develop the product.

❌ The first approach is not that agile or quick. In fact, it resembles a waterfall approach to product development that takes ages to get to a viable product. Also, engineers focus on coding and might lose focus on UX (user experience).

❌ The second alternative might innovate by creating new customer and user needs. Nevertheless, user feedback might come in too late to align the product with user needs without costing more.

✔️ Last, in the third option, the Product Manager and the engineering team gather requirements and make decisions together. The first doesn't tell the latter how to code, and the latter doesn't tell the first how to prioritize. The result is better UX, faster product development, and better product quality. And everyone's happy! 🎉

Relating to top management

The Product Manager should work closely not only with the engineering team but also with top management. The involvement of top management in the product development process is crucial to product success and the success of the product management role.

The more top management is involved in product development, the more the Product Manager is in a support role. And that's truer for young companies.

In a startup environment, the Product Manager often doesn’t lead the idea generation process. Another downside of young companies for those professionals is that they have less influence on the product vision.

It's time to consider how a company’s maturity impacts the product management role.

How company maturity influences the product manager

The company's maturity influences the Product Manager's performance and success. In a startup, this role should be more versatile. On the other hand, the role is narrower and has clearer boundaries in a mature company.

So, in a startup, the Product Manager might be responsible for market research, pricing, and customer support. That's because startups are growing companies that often have a tight staffing budget.

But despite being highly dynamic environments, young companies represent a land of opportunities for Product Managers. They might influence the business strategy more as the company grows. And they might also have a say when it comes to using or assigning company resources.

Finally, what the Product Manager lacks in a startup, they have in abundance in a mature company. An established customer portfolio is an example of that.

Product managers are the product’s backbone

The product management role is an essential element of any technology company. Perhaps their major responsibility is to define the product strategy and play a key role in Sprint Planning or PI Planning. But they also prioritize the planned features for the increment beforehand. And they coordinate the work of teams from different departments.

At a higher level, the Product Manager must communicate with those teams. The goal is to make sure everyone is on the same page. And ultimately, they're strong leaders who trigger the development of useful and profitable products.

If you're a Product Manager looking for more tools to help manage your product, check out Easy Agile's tools. Our roadmapping tool for Jira might help you sequence features for delivery to your customers. And Easy Agile's PI Planning solution for Jira might help you visualize program dependencies and milestones, plus do cross-team planning.

You can find dozens of product management tools that fit SaaS goals.

These tools vary in features, functionality, and pricing. However, one thing is certain: Product management tools are more supportive than ever before.

Find out what product management can best support your software development.

What are product management software tools?

Product management software tools help to guide software development teams through their workflow.

Product management tools can help team members conduct research, create assessments, do iterations, and plan their product launches. Some tools even support roadmapping product development, so they can support agile teams.

Development teams can use roadmapping tools to:

• Streamline product strategy
• Draw up their product plan
• Create their product roadmaps
• Develop user journey maps
• Manage backlogs
• Conduct research on customer needs
• Improve prioritization of product features
• Determine the length of their Scrum sprints
• Analyze data for their product research
• Do process mapping
• Manage product releases
• Improve how agile teams collaborate
• Create new products
• Deliver better products
• Message team members

Using product management tools are ideal when working with remote teams. It is also the solution to increasing collaboration across cross-functional teams.

Many or most of these product management tools also integrate well with existing software, so it’s no big deal to customize existing systems. You can also customize many of these product management tools to meet your product team’s needs.

Here are eight of the most recognizable product software tools available to start your new roadmapping journey.

1. Jira

Jira is typically seen as the best product management software tool for software development. However, many other industries use Jira for roadmapping and managing their projects. This popularity is due to the fact that Jira offers a free plan, but it goes deeper than that.

Jira is the ideal software management tool to use in managing Scrum, Kanban, Waterfall, and other agile methodologies. The user interface is intuitive, making it easy and convenient to use whether you’re a product manager for software or other products. Because it is also a convenient tool, you can use it to assign tasks and manage projects and product development.

Product managers can easily keep track of workflows, agile team responsibilities, and tasks. You get to see where backlogs are building in Scrum or Kanban. You can also manage velocity charts, burndown charts, release burndown and sprint reports with Jira software.

You can also include software like Slack, GitHub, and others to round off your Jira product management tool.

Some of the key features you can anticipate in this software include:

• Visually capturing the product vision to develop better products
• Collaboration tools to keep teams on board in real-time
• Gantt charts to view project and product progress
• A Scrum or Kanban board
• User-friendly roadmaps
• Milestone tracking
• Portfolio management
• Comprehensive Agle reporting
• Extensive automation of the product management process
• The ability to connect codes with issues

In terms of pricing, small businesses often go for the free plan. Jira’s free plan allows 10 users to access roadmapping and other features simultaneously. The paid plan is about $7 monthly for each user.

Agile teams using Jira can benefit from Easy Agile Programs for Jira. It helps teams align on their goals, focus on features and epics, and view dependencies. However, all Easy Agile plugins work with Jira. They simplify everything from PI planning to creating personas and roadmaps.

2. Trello

Trello uses a card system to manage Kanban and other product development workflows. When the administrator sets up the Trello board, product teams get a visual representation of workflows. They can see user stories, who is responsible for tasks, and an overall view of workflow and product life cycles. All these features and others make for an excellent roadmap tool.

The disadvantage of this system is that it doesn’t have a calendar. Another drawback is it offers basic folders for task categorization. It will be difficult to use Trello for Scrum, for example, as you have limited access to folders and there are no subfolders. You can however access multiple user stories to streamline workflows for simple projects.

Despite these drawbacks, Trello does include workflow automation, courtesy of the Butler robot. This little robot feature enables you to set certain rules and calendar triggers so that you can automate repeating assignments. Trello is probably better suited to startups or tracking progress when you have a small salesforce.

Because the Trello platform is simple (but intuitive), team collaboration is convenient. Communicating via Trello is also user-friendly, helping product teams to immediately see who is doing what and task deadlines.

While Trello defaults to the Kanban methodology, you can use it for other project types.

Several features you can look forward to on Trello, include:

• Prioritization of tasks
• Tracking deadlines
• Gantt charts
• Kanban board
• Tools for Agile team collaboration
• Resource and task management
• Automation of workflows
• Tracking team member progress
• Various templates

Trello has a free plan where product managers can use up to 10 boards for each of their teams. You can also purchase the pain plan on a yearly basis, which costs around $10 per user.

3. Wrike

Wrike is as much a tool for streamlining workflows as it is for managing product development. Wrike is flexible, adaptable, and dynamic and is a tool designed for better product decisions.

You can use it for small product management, single client management, or as an enterprise-wide tool for product management. Wrike is also versatile enough to use in software product development or marketing. This platform also has a special tool for marketing, making it easier to manage salesforce operations.

Wrike is customizable, so you can include Gantt charts and Kanban boards to improve team member collaboration. Another function of this platform is its Work Intelligence AI tool which product managers can use for automation and predict product risk.

Wrike works well with Jira, Slack, GitHub, Dropbox, and several other tools. You can also customize other integrations to tailor Wrike for product management teams. If you want to add software which this platform doesn’t support, you can. You simply create the solution you need.

The most prominent features of Wrike are:

• The ability to integrate third-party applications
• Its comprehensive, versatile API
• Managing multiple template options
• Permission and access control
• Importing and exporting data
• Integration of spreadsheets and tables
• Convenient task management
• A user interface for dragging and dropping
• Categorizing and structuring product tasks
• Calendar and timeline control
• Files and documents management
• Tracking activities and progress
• Filtering of data
• Stats and reporting
• Shared or public workspace

Wrike offers a free plan for the use of simple features, but you need to pay about $9.80 a month for each user to access more complex functionality.

4. Productboard

Productboard is right up there with the likes of Zendesk. It provides one of the best features for gathering user feedback. As every software development team knows, user feedback can make or break product success. With this product, you can categorize customer feedback, turn this into valuable information and prioritize this feedback.

Productboard lets you track their feedback during the lifecycle of each product via a portal. This portal supports idea exchange and management, which team members use as inputs to increase product value. This software tool is also great for collecting use cases and understanding user behavior to create the right products for customers.

You can use Slack and email with the Productboard, but if you want additional software integration, you must arrange this yourself. Fortunately, the API in this product is user-friendly to make this happen.

The main features of Productboard include:

• Storehouses for product feedback
• Customer segments that are particularly dynamic
• The ability to prioritize and categorize customer feedback
• Transforming feedback into valuable insights
• A powerful system for value assessment
• Roadmapping tools that you can customize
• Prioritization of tasks

You can get an annual Productboard basic plan at around $20 a month for every user.

5. ProdPad

ProdPad takes the user experience into consideration. It has a lean roadmapping function that you can use to highlight goals and objectives. You can experiment with this product software tool to include user feedback in product development. ProdPad is also known as being among the best product management software tools on the market.

The product roadmap tools are simple to use and include color coding for roadmapping. ProdPad has an easy drag-and-drop feature, privacy settings, and you can use the priority checkpoints as you need.

Development teams can access an ideas management feature to create priority charts. Here, they can see how backlogs influence impact and effort charts in workflows. You can also simply import data from other sources to boost new product development if necessary.

One more feature that characterizes ProdPad is the ability of team members to see associations between user ideas and product development. They can also develop customer lists to question further about their product experiences.

You can collect use cases and understand user behavior better. You can then use all this information as inputs for new product development.

Features that you can expect from this product management tool are:

• Idea generation and capture
• Capture and storage of customer feedback
• Integration with apps that support customer feedback
• Integration with other third-party apps
• Priority charting of ideas
• Lean product roadmaps
• Product roadmapping based on objectives
• Creation of customer portfolios

You can purchase ProdPad’s Essential Plan at about $149 per month for annual billing. This plan allows you to use three administrators or editors for product planning.

6. Asana

Asana is also a useful management platform. You can use it as a solution to roadmap workflows. Asana is popular among small business startups and larger enterprises.

This management solution is cloud-based. It enables team members to share their workspace and assign and track tasks and work progress. Asana is also an excellent platform for team members to collaborate.

You don’t get much customer support with Asana. And, although not ideal for complex team management, Asana has many redeeming features, some of which include:

• Excellent team messaging and collaboration
• Ideal for outlining detailed goals
• Efficient for managing multiple tasks and team members
• A user-friendly dashboard
• Tracking of milestones
• Automation
• Several templates option
• Project planning functionality
• Multiple analytics and reporting options
• Managing resources
• Tracking of time and expenses

Asana has a free plan if you can cope with limited features. Paid plans begin at approximately $10.99 per month for each user. The company bills annually.

7. GLIDR

There are multiple management solutions for streamlining product workflows. GLIDR offers one more platform from which to achieve product software development goals. You can develop detailed product plans that meet customer expectations. GLIDR highlights the customer experience, so places their feedback at the forefront of the best product deliverables.

You can manage product research, use cases, and user behavior on this platform. You can then create product specs, link ideas, create viable user stories, prioritize features, and much more.

GLIDR provides several board view options that help software developers to create themes from ideas. You can also categorize ideas by their status, fill in timelines, or show these ideas on Kanban boards.

Other helpful functions include the ability to integrate apps such as Intercom and Zendesk with GLIDR. You can also link Jira and Trello with this product management software.

Product managers and teams can use GLIDR to streamline their workflows, track product progress, create reports and transform roadmaps into the best products possible.

The primary features of GLIDR include:

• Product canvasses
• Public roadmapping
• Options for research and experimentation
• Trend scores to rank ideas
• Prioritization of features
• Activity feeds
• Progress tracking and monitoring
• User-friendly dashboards
• Reporting that you can export via PDF format

You can test GLIDR for free for 14 days. Then, the cheapest option is about $8 per person, per month for a team of five people. GLIDR bills annually and has three other plan options that give you access to more features.

Up your game with Easy Agile

One way to up your product management software game is to take advantage of Easy Agile resources. You can either use our Jira apps to integrate with existing product management platforms or give your existing system a boost.

Select from apps for Kanban Workflow for Jira or boost product development performance with User Story Maps for Jira.

Up your game with Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira to guide your team to product success or use our Programs for Jira for Program Increment Planning.

Whichever apps you choose (all of them?), you can improve product team management with the best product management software available.

A product backlog represents all of the goals and desired outcomes within the development of a product. They are the specific tasks a team hopes to complete when they set out to design or improve upon a product.

What makes a product backlog so effective is its agile nature. Backlogs are in constant evolution, changing and adapting based on the current needs of stakeholders and customers. To keep a backlog up-to-date and in its most effective form, it needs to be continuously refined and adapted. This process takes time, but there are simple, powerful strategies for maintaining a quality backlog.

A good product backlog has four characteristics. It is:

• Detailed appropriately
• Estimated
• Emergent
• Prioritized

We’ll cover all of these attributes in detail, including how you can ensure your product backlog is in good health. But first, let’s get on the same page about product backlogs and the refinement process.

Transform your flat product backlog with

Easy Agile TeamRhythm

Try Now

What is a product backlog?

A product backlog is a prioritized and ordered list that represents the work to be completed by a development team. Backlog items are derived from the product roadmap and are organized based on the tasks that are most vital — the ones that will make the biggest impact at any given time.

Backlog items represent what it will take to develop a new product or improve an existing one with new features. It’s all of the work a team will tackle in the future, but it’s also a flexible, living organism that evolves as a development team learns more about the product and its stakeholders.

The product owner is in charge of ordering and prioritizing backlog items, placing high-priority items at the top. They are also responsible for backlog refinement, which ensures all backlog items are organized, have appropriate details, and are ready for any upcoming sprint planning.

Product backlogs vs. sprint backlogs

Sprint backlogs are quite similar to product backlogs, but they serve a different, more specific purpose. At the beginning of a Scrum, the product owner arranges the product backlog items that are to be completed by the Scrum team in that sprint.

The Scrum product backlog represents a small subset of the overall product backlog. The product backlog is the entire bottle of wine, while the sprint backlog is the glass of wine you’re going to tackle next. In this analogy, the Scrum master is the sommelier, providing guidance, context, and feedback throughout the sprint.

At the end of the sprint, a sprint review is conducted with the stakeholders to better understand what to tackle next. Backlog items that weren’t completed may be pushed back into the larger product backlog to get to at a later date or during the next sprint. Another sprint planning meeting will prepare the team to tackle the next batch of backlog items.

Why does a backlog need refinement?

Backlog refinement isn’t a luxury task reserved for when you get a chance to tidy up. Refinement is a key part of product backlog management that ensures a backlog always has the most recent, up-to-date information.

Refining the backlog prepares it for the development team, saving time in the long-run. The process helps to prioritize items and ensures there’s nothing in your backlog that you no longer need.

As you’re well aware, the agile methodology centers around flexibility and the ability to evolve a plan as new information or roadblocks appear. What you thought was important at the beginning of product development may not be necessary anymore, or your stakeholders may have turned you in a completely different direction.

Product backlog refinement includes:

• Adding detail to high-priority backlog items for greater comprehension.
• Improving and reviewing estimates.
• Removing items that are no longer relevant to the product.
• Adding items based on new stakeholder feedback.
• Making adjustments based on the most recent bug fixes.
• Prioritizing items that bring customer value.
• Ordering backlog items to deliver the most impact over the next sprint.

Backlog refinement takes time, but it’s well worth the effort to have a healthy, up-to-date backlog that’s always ready for the development team.

DEEP: The key attributes of a good product backlog

Roman Pichler, the author of Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products That Customers Love, developed DEEP to describe the key attributes of a good product backlog. The acronym DEEP helps product owners and development teams understand how to make smart decisions while maintaining a successful backlog.

The concept is applied throughout the product backlog refinement process, which is a critical part of backlog management. Backlog refinement, previously called backlog grooming, is an ongoing process that ensures a backlog is in tip-top shape. We like to think of it like trimming the branches of a plant.

To help a plant grow, you need to prune and trim it. The refinement process adds details where needed and prioritizes items based on the current information a product owner has from team members and stakeholders.

DEEP stands for Detailed appropriately, Estimated, Emergent, and Prioritized.

Following these guidelines and best practices will lead to a quality backlog, which will lead to smooth product development and a successful end result. Let’s dig into each attribute. 🔎

Detailed appropriately

Details matter, especially as a user story rises in priority. As a backlog item gets closer to being completed or moved into a sprint backlog, it requires more detail. Upcoming backlog items should be detailed appropriately, so they can be better understood by the development team. The closer an item is to being completed, the more detail it should have.

On the other hand, items that are lower on the priority list don’t require nearly as much detail. It’s a poor use of time to add details to lower priority items since you never know how the backlog is going to evolve. You could waste a lot of time detailing low-priority items when they might be removed or revised later on in the process.

Estimated

Thorough estimation should be focused on high-priority items that will be tackled soon. As you refine your backlog and add more details to top-priority items, you can improve your estimation. A good option is using story points to zoom in on the details. They can help you accurately and practically reflect the reality of an item from the customer’s perspective.

📘 Read our guide to incorporating user story points to start using this technique.

Since not much is known about them, it’s difficult to properly estimate items that are lower in priority. When you are further down the priority list, your estimation will be more of a guess since you don’t have all of the information yet. In these cases, use a simple agile estimation technique, such as t-shirt sizing (labeling work items as XS, S, M, L, XL) to make a guesstimate. Based on the information you have at that moment in time, make an approximate estimate on the exertion required for that backlog item.

Emergent

The more you learn about the product and its customers, the more you can improve your product backlog. The backlog is a living document that represents your plan at any one given time. It’s not set in stone, and it should see revisions and improvements as you go.

With the information gleaned from retrospectives and stakeholder feedback, you can update the backlog to reflect what you’ve learned along the way. Allow your backlog to evolve, adding, removing, and refining items as needed.

Prioritized

A product backlog needs prioritization. Items at the top are a higher priority, and items toward the bottom are a lower priority. When deciding which items should be prioritized, consider the value each item will provide.

Your team can maximize its efforts by prioritizing the backlog items that will provide the most value to customers at any given time. Since this will change depending on the current needs of your customers, you need to continually adjust and refine your priority order.

Achieve a DEEP product backlog with Easy Agile

Easy Agile is dedicated to helping agile teams work more effectively. We have a suite of Jira apps designed for teams that want to develop products that put the customer at the forefront of decision making.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm transform your flat product backlog, prioritizing based on value to the customer and bringing the customer journey to life. They help teams organize and prioritize user stories while visualizing the customer journey. Keeping your customers embedded in your process will help you make refinement decisions that are in the best interest of the customer, no matter what phase of development you’re in.

Learn more about our agile apps and follow our blog for the latest content for Jira teams.

When it comes to SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), PI planning is a critical first step in preparing a team. The gathering, often held quarterly, brings together a team, including software developers, team leaders, stakeholders, and everyone in between. Together, they complete essential planning.

While most PI planning used to occur in one big room, today’s remote and distributed teams have paved the way for online and hybrid PI planning events. It doesn’t matter so much where the session takes place, so long as it continually occurs with advance planning, team buy-in, and event execution.

We created an ultimate guide to PI Planning, which we continue to update with the latest trends, planning questions, resources, and tools. But in the post, we’ll focus on one specific aspect of PI planning — the mistakes you should avoid. ❌

The complete PI Planning solution for Jira

Easy Agile Programs

Join a demo

What is PI Planning, and why is it so important?

PI Planning is Program Increment Planning, which is a recurring session for teams within the same Agile Release Train (ART) to meet, align, and plan what comes next.

The planning session provides time for teams and stakeholders to align on a shared vision, discuss features, identify cross-team dependencies, and plan the roadmap that will move everything forward. Adopting SAFe begins with PI Planning, and that solid starting point is critical to the success of SAFe.

PI Planning events form the foundation of how your team works together and how a product/project develops. It’s a real-time event that typically brings a team together under one roof, which is why it’s also called big room planning. However, it doesn’t matter if your team plans together in person or if you use online tools to run remote PI Planning. The important part is making sure teams can plan in real-time and that the PI Planning session results in critical PI objectives that will set the team up for success.

If your team is successful at the PI Planning process, you will:

✅ Build trust, rapport, and collaboration between team members, product managers, different business teams, and stakeholders

✅ Align on key business values, objectives, and goals

✅ Spot dependencies and other issues before they disrupt workflow

✅ Enhance problem solving and decision making

✅ Understand what’s expected of each team member going into the next sprint

✅ Gain valuable insight from key stakeholders and business owners

✅ Ground the team in reality with expectations, timelines, and clear goals

Easy Agile Programs: Equip your remote, distributed or co-located teams for success with a digital tool for PI Planning.

Join a demo

Free Trial

PI Planning mistakes to avoid

If you can identify the potential pitfalls of PI planning, you have a better chance of avoiding them. Don’t fall prey to these common mistakes:

1. Skipping or not prioritizing PI Planning

2. Failing to thoroughly plan in advance

3. Running long or boring sessions

4. Allowing remote restraints to stand in your way

5. Missing out on retrospective insights

1. Skipping or not prioritizing PI Planning

Scaled Agile, Inc. says that “PI Planning is essential to SAFe: If you are not doing it, you are not doing SAFe.” This couldn’t be more true!

PI Planning is an absolutely essential aspect of SAFe, and there’s no scenario in which it should be skipped or undervalued. Failing to effectively run a PI Planning meeting can have dire consequences for product development.

Work inevitably gets busy, and when product development falls behind or roadblocks come up, something has to give. However, no matter how tempting it may be, never allow your PI Planning to get pushed, delayed, scaled back, or skipped altogether.

Set your PI Planning date well in advance and stick to that date to ensure everyone can be available and prepared.

2. Failing to thoroughly plan in advance

Pre-PI planning is essential to the success of your event. You’ll have limited time as a group, so it’s essential that you use it wisely once the time comes.

Plan the date well in advance to ensure everyone can attend and access planning materials. Before your upcoming PI, make sure your backlog items are refined and ready so precious time isn’t wasted during the PI event.

3. Running long or boring sessions

PI Planning often includes long and heavy sessions, which can kill the vibe and stifle creativity and problem solving. 😴

Do all that you can to engage the team and keep sessions short. This can help a team participate more, invest in the session, and problem solve more effectively. Look for creative ways of running sessions that engage more than just the energetic few. Carefully consider timelines, and ensure no session runs too long to prevent boredom or wasted time.

4. Allowing remote restraints to stand in your way

There may be different challenges with running PI Planning remotely. But with advanced planning and the right tools, you can run a successful planning session no matter where your team is located.

Don’t neglect your PI Planning because your team is remote or temporarily working remotely. There are plenty of tools that can help remote teams engage online with team breakouts, video conferencing, online sticky notes, and PI Planning plugins.

Virtual breakout sessions are essential to ensuring the right people can engage at any given time and that no time is wasted. Carefully plan your remote PI Planning to ensure everyone is prepared and knows where and when they need to participate online.

5. Missing out on retrospective insights

Not to sound like a broken record, but retrospective 👏🏿 insights 👏🏻 are 👏🏾 important 👏🏽.

We know there’s only so much time allocated for PI Planning and so much to get done, but you need to make time for a short retrospective. Otherwise, you’ll never truly learn how to improve. A post-PI Planning session will allow your team to discuss the planning event, including what went well, what didn’t go well, and what could be improved for next time.

Make sure you record retrospective insights and implement important ideas into the next PI planning meeting. After all, it wouldn’t be agile if you didn’t continually try to improve your systems.

Level up your PI Planning with Easy Agile Programs

Effective planning begins with using the right tools, which is all the more important as teams do PI Planning remotely or with distributed teams.

Easy Agile builds products designed to help agile teams plan efficiently and effectively. Easy Agile Programs for Jira is ideal for helping teams effectively manage programs with streamlined visibility. It’s a complete PI Planning solution for all types of Jira users — including distributed, remote, or face-to-face.

What are the benefits of Easy Agile Programs?

With Easy Agile Programs, you can:

• Build a program board in Jira
• Effectively manage programs with streamlined visibility
• Understand the health of your program backlog/program increments
• Make real-time iterations
• Rework and adapt your PI Planning to the needs of your team.
• Spot feature level dependencies
• Deliver alignment at a large scale
• Create milestones and team swimlanes
• Align development teams or multiple different teams on goals and timelines

Try Now

Learn more about the benefits of Easy Agile Programs and try it free for 30 days. We believe in being transparent about our product vision, which means you can follow our product journey, including new features, what we’re working on, and what we hope to accomplish in the future.

Psychological safety is the key to high-performing teams. But how is it created?

Agility is the response to a complicated situation where unknowns override the knowns. A high-performing team is one where all members have their say, and there are multiple decision-makers. Psychological safety is the belief that the workplace is safe for speaking up about ideas, concerns or even failures.

But where does kindness fit in?

Kindness is the foundation for psychological safety.

Kindness is essential at each of the first three stages of Dr Timothy R. Clark 4 Stages of Psychological Safety model.

Stage 1: Inclusion Safety

Humans long to feel accepted before they need to be heard. As a leader, you can create inclusion by showing kindness by being aware, sensitive and curious about an employee’s life. A good starting place is; how was your weekend? How is the family this week? Have you got any exciting celebrations coming up? You seem a bit quiet today, is everything okay?

Stage 2: Learner Safety

Humans need to ask questions, give and receive feedback, and make mistakes whilst feeling safe. Showing kindness creates the trust to do so.

Stage 3: Contributor Safety

Humans need to feel safe to participate as team members. A commitment to kindness ensures greater information flow, higher quality connections at work, and an increase in collaboration.

Individuals thrive in environments with psychological safety. Fear triggers the self-censoring instinct, holding us back. When the environment nurtures psychological safety, there is an increase in confidence, engagement, and high performance.

3 Tips for Implementing Kindness in Your Team Today

Tip 1: Model kindness yourself. No matter your role, kindness is contagious. If you start acting kindly, this will soon spread to your whole team. You can serve with kindness by listening, working with forgiveness, offering a helping hand, showing concern, or celebrating significant events in a coworker's life.

To celebrate random acts of kindness day and live our Give Back company value, our team donated to Kind Hearts Illawarra.

Tip 2: Incorporate kindness into your team's ceremonies. Each team member can say one thing they are grateful for in the morning huddle. Each ceremony can leave room to give thanks to a fellow team member. At Easy Agile, we put this into practice by encouraging everyone to share a 'good thing' each day.

Tip 3: Implement Good Thnx in your company Slack. The Good Thnx Foundation provides a link between people and corporates that want to give and charities. As our team send “thanks” to one another, the recipient is given $50 to donate to a charity of their choice. Our contribution via Good Thnx for FY21 was $15,201.

Simply put, be kind today; it is free and enables high-performing agile teams!

Raise your hand if you've ever had an argument, oops 😳 — I mean a heated discussion — on how to set up and organize Jira. Yeah, us too.

Some hotly contested topics include:

• Project: Is it best to organize by team, by function, by feature, or by product?
• Agile epics, features, stories, tasks, sub-tasks, bugs — what should you use and when?
• Sprint board column headings and swimlanes — we're not even going there.

Unfortunately, there isn't one best workflow in Jira or any tool your agile team uses. More important than your workflow is setting up your team members to consistently deliver business value to your end-users. The goal of your agile project management is to enable and support your Scrum team in this endeavor.

We're going to take a look at one aspect of your process — through the epics agile teams use. Stick with us, and we'll explain what an epic is, why agile epics are important, and how to avoid some epic mistakes.

What is an epic?

Simply put, an epic is a bucket that holds smaller work items that must be completed to satisfy the task. Some people think of epics as a big user story. That's fine if it helps you visualize it, but epics are quite different from stories.

• Agile teams use epics differently for planning or not at all.
  While your team might be able to give it a t-shirt size, the amount of work in an epic is usually too large to be estimated in story points. Some epics are so large that they need to be broken down into smaller epics before you even ask for team estimates.
• An epic isn't written like a user story.
  You know the template — “As a user, I want to X so that I can Y.” That’s perfect for a user story, but not so much for an epic. An epic example might be "Add cross-sells" with a description that lists places where the Product Owner would like to present the end-user with opportunities to purchase related products. That’s not a story, but a request for functionality.
• The epic might be acting as a placeholder for work that is yet to be defined.
  Your Product Owner may use epics as placeholders on a product roadmap for long-term planning. They'll wait to define the work until the implementation time frame is closer.
• An epic is rarely completed in a single sprint.
  Because of their size, epics typically don't fit within one iteration. Your software development team slices functionality so they can deliver working software each sprint. This may mean they complete a story or two from an epic for two sprints, skip a sprint, and then go back to stories in that epic the next sprint.
• Epics may or may not have acceptance criteria.
  Some Scrum teams don't require epics to have acceptance criteria because it's included in the stories. If all the child stories meet what the Scrum defines as the Definition of Done, the epic is also Done.

Epics are parents and grandparents to stories and tasks. Development teams don't work on epics but rather code to the smaller user stories under the epic.

The importance of epics in your agile practice

Don't underestimate the organizational value epics bring to your product backlog. Corralling 10 or 20 related backlog items can be disruptive in sprint planning. Epics present a more cohesive look at the work and allow your Scrum team to see the big picture.

Epics offer executives and product managers a high-level overview of work in progress and what’s coming in the future.

Product Owners use epics to create a product plan from a business perspective. Current business goals may dictate that development work is focused on a particular feature represented by epics. By contrast, epics also help Product Owners plan sprints with an appropriate work ratio from multiple epics. Product Owners can take a step back from the detailed user stories and make sure each iteration contains stories from several epics to satisfy multiple stakeholders.

The way epics are visually represented in product backlogs and roadmaps is critical for long-term planning. Can you imagine planning a six-month roadmap at the user story level? It would be chaos!

Agile frameworks encourage — no — demand the ability to adjust course as needed to meet changing stakeholder needs, market demands, and business goals. Epics allow you to easily and quickly adapt your roadmaps in response to change.

How epics add value to agile development

Discovery is a big aspect of agile methodologies and product management. At the beginning of this process, your teams will be event storming, creating personas, and building journey maps. The actionable output of those activities is easily logged and organized in Jira with epics.

As those epics are further refined, they're added to a roadmap and then put on a Refinement ceremony agenda. During Refinement, the Scrum team members engage in user story mapping exercises and begin to build the detail needed for the development team to execute.

While epics provide a less detailed view of features and requests from your Product Owner, they are critical to the creation of user stories. Without the cohesive view of your sprint backlog presented through epics, agile sprints are at risk of delivering a lot of unrelated work that delivers little value.

When not to use an epic

So, while we love the agile epic, it's not perfect for everything. Here are some things to avoid when using epics.

The evergreen epic

You know the one. The epic was created when people stopped using wired telephone lines and has been lingering in your backlog in a semi-complete state ever since. Deep within, you'll find user stories and tasks, maybe with little or no relation to each other. This poor epic has become the dumping ground for orphaned stories that didn't find a home anywhere else.

Evergreen epics can be the result of a change in either business goals or product features. That’s great — you've adapted! Now you need to update your epic to reflect that. Stories can be removed, code can be deployed or shelved, and incomplete stories can be deleted or removed from the epic and reprioritized.

Brainstorming is also a cause for evergreen epics. Above, we mentioned that output from UX activities is a great way to manage actionable items. We did not say to use epics as a home for every idea that came up during brainstorming that may or may not ever make it to your roadmap.

Epics are not intended to live forever. They represent a body of work that will deliver value to your end-users and need to be completed so you can measure the results of your efforts. Evergreen epics clutter your roadmap, blurring your focus, and limiting its planning value.

The theme epic

It's easy to assign stories to epics because they're related to a specific area in the product, touch a certain code base, or satisfy an individual or group of stakeholders. That's not the purpose of an epic. Themes are a better choice for grouping work by attributes other than a specific feature implementation.

You can accomplish your organizational goals by using themes to link these stories while maintaining the integrity of scope within your epic.

Use epics to focus on specific deliverables or features. Related or not, if a story within an epic doesn't contribute to the primary focus of the epic, remove it. That doesn't mean it's not important or the right work to do during the iteration. It just means it's not part of that epic.

Being diligent about epic scope keeps your estimates cleaner and more useful for future planning. Unnecessary stories in epics inflate their estimates and actual efforts. If you ever need to look back at older work items, you probably won't remember that adding two unrelated stories was what bumped an epic from a medium to a large. If you’re using that old work item as a guide for future planning, you’ve just overestimated the effort because you didn’t limit the scope to the objective of the epic.

Keep in mind — not every story needs an epic parent. Some stories stand well on their own and might be better visualized and planned through themes.

The release epic

A release is not an epic. A release is a specific set of code and files that are bundled together and delivered to production at the same time. A release may include an epic or many epics, or it may not. But in itself, a release is not an epic.

There are excellent tools on the market developed specifically to help you with release management. By all means, assign your epics to a release, but use release tools to organize your releases and use epics to organize your features.

Epics are more than a large user story

Your agile coach or Scrum Master has probably drilled you on the Principles of Agile Software, so you know the following quote from the 12 Principles of Agile Software:

"Simplicity — the art of maximizing the amount
of work not done — is essential."

But what does it have to do with epics?

Epics simplify your backlog. They allow you to focus on the right things at the right time and keep out the noise. They keep your eye on the ball when it comes to prioritizing value and ignoring the ankle-biter work in your backlog.

We believe using epics makes for better organization in your backlog and better planning for your agile teams. Epics help you deliver value sooner by keeping you focused on the big picture and out of the weeds.

If you want a more contextual view of your epics and user stories in Jira, try Easy Agile TeamRhythm. The highly-visual story map format transforms the flat Jira backlog into a meaningful picture of work, making it easier to manage your backlog and plan sprints or versions.

When you take on the development manager role, it can feel like you're doing a little bit of everything. Your job is no longer to focus purely on code — and you're not leading your average team. In your day-to-day, you're representing, strategizing for, and even developing with your engineering team.

With all the tasks filling your to-do list, it can be easy to forget: Getting quality results depends on the quality of your leadership. Work isn't just about projects — and you're not a project manager. Great development managers are equally as good at working with people, building culture, and supporting their team members as they are at boosting efficiency and working on all things technical.

To get the most out of your team, here are five tips that every development manager needs to know to get the best from their team.

1. Offer guidance, not micromanagement

Have you ever gotten anything done with someone breathing down your neck? It's not comfortable, and it creates a culture of distrust. In an agile environment, this goes against the principle of having a self-organizing team — one in which each team member takes charge of their own responsibilities and timelines.

A great development manager knows that each team member contributes their own unique work experience and knowledge to a team. Your job description isn't to do other people's jobs for them or boss them around. Rather, it's to ensure the engineering team produces quality products in a timely manner.

You'll get more out of your team by inspiring them instead of telling them what to do. Instead of dictating deadlines, guide your team in the right direction by illustrating the importance of your priority projects.

How will each person's contribution impact the broader company? How will finishing one task early unlock new opportunities for the team? Nudge your employees toward better decisions that they make themselves to build a team that's enthusiastic about their work.

2. Plan with the big picture in mind

While members of your product development team may be diving into the details — writing code, checking off smaller tasks — your job as a development manager is to think big. Development managers play a key role in the agile planning process by figuring out which projects their team should prioritize and how to best complete them.

Instead of just thinking solely about what's best for your team, you need to consider which projects and tasks best align with your company's broader business goals. This will help you build a development team that creates stand-out results for the entire company.

At the same time, you should be fully aware of what's possible for your team to take on. Will committing to one new product up one person's workload far more than others? Does your team have the capacity for more work at all? No matter how many years of experience your team has, they — as individuals and as a whole — need room to breathe so they don't burn out.

3. Keep your technical skills up-to-date

"Manager" may be the brag-worthy highlight of your job title, but that doesn't mean you can let your technical skills go. Odds are, coding will still make up a chunk of your day-to-day — or at least your week-to-week. Even when you're not directly assigned to a software development task, you'll still need to guide your team members through their individual tasks.

To give your team the support they need, you need to be able to speak their coding language. This will help you lead code reviews, take part in technical conversations, anticipate (and prevent) roadblocks, and ensure you're implementing the most efficient technologies. Regularly taking courses and joining a coding community are two simple ways to be a problem-solving champion for your engineering team.

Your technical expertise will help your team stick to your product roadmaps and meet key milestones.

4. Bolster your communication skills

When you take on the development manager job, you become a liaison between your engineering team and other parts of your organization. For example, you might communicate the needs of your developers to senior management or pass on requests from sales managers to your team.

People without a technical background might think you're talking about music if you start talking about C#. Engineers without business management experience may roll their eyes if you start talking about five-year plans instead of an upcoming product launch. Even though coworkers share the same company culture, they don't necessarily "get" each other all the time.

Developer managers are translators who represent their team and deliver messages back to them as needed.

Since you're constantly working with people from different backgrounds, you need to strengthen your interpersonal skills. Get to know how you can best communicate with different people. Which teams prefer email over texting? Who's the go-to contact person for each team? Does anyone listen better when they're not hungry? 🙋

The stronger your communication skills are, the more likely your team will get the resources they need, and the better they'll connect their priorities to your company's.

5. Be available to support your team members

Development manager may be a part-time managerial and part-time technical role, but in this position, you need to be a full-time leader for your team. When you want to consistently improve your team's output, you need to put your top-notch leadership skills into practice day in and day out.

As a development manager, you need to act as a coach of sorts for your team members. Schedule out recurring one-on-ones with your team members, during which you can chat about career goals and pain points on top of current projects. When you have a new hire, chat with them about their desired career path during the onboarding stage.

Based on what you learn, you can brainstorm ways to support their professional development. You don't have to pay for their bachelor's degree to help them succeed. Connect them to mentors, send them to conferences, recommend them for speaking opportunities — your options are endless (and simpler than you may think).

Offering support on both current projects and in long-term career goals is your chance to invest in your employees. It'll help them become better workers — and they'll feel valued, too. Did you know nearly half of employees leave their jobs to gain new skills? Keeping your development team at its best in the long run requires you to help each employee grow.

Lead your team as an effective development manager

Leading your development team to success takes an unbeatable blend of people skills, technical skills, and leadership skills. In your multi-faceted role, your ability to communicate and align your team with the rest of your organization is invaluable.

With Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira, you can make team alignment simpler by dragging and dropping any Jira issue on a visual timeline. Watch our demo today to see how this tool can help your engineering team shine!

By now, you’re pretty familiar with Scrum. It’s given your team a framework they can work with to achieve internal goals so they can deliver quality software to customers. But, you can always improve your Scrum practices to continue to delight your customers. 😁 One of these is the daily scrum — a practice that sounds straightforward, but is easy to mismanage (more on this soon 😉).

The daily scrum consists of three elements — Scrum roles, Scrum artifacts, and Scrum events.

In this article, we'll show you how these components fit into the all-important daily scrum meeting, provide some tips to keep your daily scrum running smoothly, and discuss what traps to avoid so that your team is always on task. We'll also point you towards resources that will get you proficient in the other elements of agile. Our goal, as always, is to make you an agile pro. 🏄🏽‍♀️

What is the Daily Scrum Meeting?

Let's do a quick recap of each of them before we dive into the daily scrum:

• Scrum roles: These are the product owner, the Scrum master, and the development team. These Scrum team members work together as a unit to achieve their goals.
• Scrum artifacts: Artifacts include the product backlog, the sprint backlog, and the increment. The artifacts represent information to the team that enables them to have transparent views against which to measure their progress.
• Scrum events: The sprint, sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review, and sprint retrospective give the team an opportunity to meet and refine any of the Scrum artifacts that need adjusting to keep the team's goals within view.

The daily scrum is a meeting between team members to discuss its current sprint progress. It's time to discover if any adjustments to the sprint or the product backlog need to be made in order to achieve its sprint goal.

Importance of Daily Scrum

The daily scrum plays a crucial role in enhancing both team coordination and communication. This brief, focused meeting offers the team a structured environment to align on progress and obstacles, contributing to several key areas:

1. Progress Transparency: Team members get a clear view of what everyone is working on, which fosters accountability and mutual support.
2. Impediment Identification: Problems and potential roadblocks are surfaced early, allowing the team to address them promptly and minimize project delays.
3. Focused Collaboration: By keeping discussions relevant and on-point, the team can spend their time more effectively, concentrating on solutions rather than prolonged debates.
4. Goal Alignment: The meeting helps reaffirm and refocus efforts toward the sprint goals, ensuring everyone is aligned and moving in the same direction.

By adhering to best practices, such as keeping the meeting time-boxed and promoting an inclusive atmosphere, teams can maximize the benefits of the daily scrum, leading to a more cohesive and efficient working environment.

Key Participants in the Daily Scrum

Development team

The development team members are the main participants in the daily scrum. During the meeting, they report on their progress towards the sprint goal to discover if any adjustments need to be made. They can do this by each answering three questions:

1. What did I work on yesterday towards the sprint goal?
2. How do I plan on working towards the sprint goal today?
3. ​Is there anything preventing me from finishing what I am working on?

By doing so, everyone on the team is in the loop of the full team's progress. The answers to these questions also allow the team to uncover any blockers and adjust the sprint backlog accordingly. An example of a blocker may be a bug that prevents one developer from finishing her assigned user story in the sprint.

Scrum master and product owner

In traditional Scrum, the Scrum master and product owner aren’t active participants — and aren’t technically required — in the daily scrum meeting since they don’t do the development work that will achieve the sprint goal. However, they can still be valuable meeting participants. It’s up to the Scrum team to decide if they should attend.

• The product owner can lead the way in adjusting the sprint's backlog items. For example, the bug that is blocking other work can be moved so it gets fixed in time to keep the sprint goal within reach.
• The Scrum master can make sure that daily scrum best practices are being followed and that the team is avoiding some of the common pitfalls that betray the objectives of the daily scrum meeting. Let's look at those next.

What's the Difference Between Daily Scrum and Daily Standup?

Sometimes, it can be confusing to tell the differences between daily scrum and daily standup — and sometimes the terms are used interchangeably. However, it's worth pointing out the differences between the two.

A daily scrum is an event that is defined in the Scrum guide. So, then what is daily stand-up, and how is it different? 🤔

A daily stand-up is a daily meeting whose objective is to provide team members with progress towards a common goal. However, it is less restrictive in terms of its participants and time limits. In other words, team members outside of the Scrum team can participate and the meeting can run longer than 15 minutes. For example, a company may conduct a daily stand-up that includes its entire staff or a particular department whose progress updates are not limited to the development of software.

Daily Scrum Best Practices

So, what are the best practices for conducting your daily scrum meetings effectively?

1. Complete the daily scrum in a time box

A 15-minute time frame is most commonly used to ensure that the team stays focused and on point. After all, team members only need to answer their three questions succinctly and effectively.

2. Conduct the meeting at the same time and place every day

This will provide a level of consistency and regularity and will help foster the Scrum values of commitment and focus.

3. Include the same team members in each daily scrum meeting

If you have a rotating cast of characters, then you run the risk of disruptions. Some people in the meeting will likely be missing context from prior meetings and will need to be updated.

Daily Scrums for Remote or Distributed Teams

Daily scrums are pivotal in ensuring team alignment, but for remote or distributed teams, they require thoughtful execution to maintain effectiveness. Here's how you can make the most of your virtual daily scrums:

Leverage Video Meetings Intelligently

Video meetings bring the advantage of live conversation, crucial for real-time collaboration and clarity.

• Respect Personal Needs: Recognize that being on camera can be draining. Offer flexibility by allowing team members to choose when to use their cameras.
• Avoid Fatigue: Encourage camera use for important discussions but provide options for audio-only participation to prevent exhaustion.

Manage Time Zones Wisely

Distributed teams often span multiple time zones. Here's how to navigate the challenge:

• Schedule Smartly: Find a suitable meeting time that works for the majority. For instance, someone might join in the mid-morning while it’s early morning for others.
• Consider Asynchronous Updates: When time zones are vastly different, rely on asynchronous communication like task board comments or chat channels to keep everyone informed without disrupting their work-life balance.

Utilize Visual Tools

Visual aids can significantly enhance understanding and engagement in virtual meetings.

• Screen Sharing: Use screen sharing to display task boards or project management software, providing a clear, visual context for discussions.
• Collaborative Tools: Leverage tools like Miro or Trello for visual brainstorming and task tracking during the scrum.

Define Working Agreements

Creating clear working agreements ensures everyone is on the same page regarding processes and expectations.

• Communication Methods: Specify how team members should communicate, whether through video calls, messaging apps, or emails.
• Collaboration Tools: Decide on which tools to use for documentation, real-time collaboration, and async updates. Popular options include Slack for communication and Jira for task management.

Daily Scrum Pitfalls

There are tempting activities to avoid while conducting your daily scrum meeting. These are some of the common pitfalls to avoid:

1. Using the meeting as a status update

To the product owner, Scrum master, or other stakeholders. The main objective of this meeting is for the development team to answer their three questions so that they can make any needed adjustments to keep the sprint goal intact. It should not be used as a status meeting for developers to report on the progress of their work.

2. Turning it into a problem-solving session

To resolve any blocks that are discussed in the meeting within the 15-minute time frame. One thing will undoubtedly happen if the team attempts this — the meeting will run too long! The Scrum master should advise the team to stay on task during the meeting and defer these problem-solving attempts to time outside of the daily scrum meeting.

3. Focusing on a task board

As a means of tracking progress. The daily scrum meeting is a time for discussion. If the team is staring at a task board, it's wasting valuable time by focusing on the status of tasks and not on talking about making adjustments to its work.

In addition to these key points, there are several other common mistakes that can derail the effectiveness of a daily scrum:

• It’s become a boring status meeting that no one wants to attend. This indicates a lack of engagement and purpose.
• Developers are reporting personal performance to a scrum master or manager, which can undermine the collaborative spirit of the team.
• The meeting isn’t held if the scrum master can’t make it that day. This dependency can disrupt the consistency of daily progress checks.
• The team is trying to solve problems and find solutions during the daily scrum, which should be avoided to respect the timebox.
• The daily scrum is being used to refine work items, which is not its intended purpose. Refinement should occur separately.
• The timebox isn’t respected, leading some team members to feel like the meeting is a burden. It's crucial to stick to the 15-minute limit.
• Some developers think they don’t need to show up, which can result in misalignment and missed opportunities for team synchronization.

By being aware of these common pitfalls and maintaining a focused and efficient daily scrum, teams can ensure they are making the most of their time together and keeping their sprint goals on track.

Master Daily Scrum and Become an Agile Pro

At Easy Agile, we provide products to manage all of your Scrum events. We are passionate about making agile accessible and easy to understand for its participants. In addition to our products, we love to provide resources so you can level up your agile game 💪. Check out our blog and our podcast to become an agile pro!

Being agile vs doing agile – what’s the difference?

Organizations around the world have recognized the need to respond rapidly to meet the challenges of constant change. As a result, they’re racing to adopt agile ways of working, with the pandemic accelerating agile adoption.

Those who get it right can make a powerful impact on their bottom line and their competitive edge. But for others, the benefits may yet to be seen.

This is where ‘doing agile’ versus ‘being agile’ can make all the difference. Because to truly reap the benefits of agile methodology, organizations need to shift from doing to being.

This article will explain the difference between being agile vs doing agile. Plus, we’ll take you through some of the common challenges many organizations face in their agile journey.

Key points

• To realize the full potential of agile ways of working, teams must cultivate an agile mindset as well as adopt agile processes.
• Moving from ‘doing agile’ to ‘being agile’ takes time, coaching, and a new approach to management.
• Done right, being agile can amplify customer satisfaction, employee engagement, growth, and profitability.

Why agile, and why now?

Agile had already been rising in popularity for over 20 years, but once the pandemic hit, this growth accelerated.

Across every industry, being able to deliver digital experiences is now crucial. Organizations now need to act and think like software companies, with a laser focus on the customer’s online experience. Together with an active approach to finding customers, you need to deliver real value to stand out from competitors.

For organizations looking to survive - and thrive - in this environment, many are turning to agile frameworks to rapidly add customer value and drive business results. Being agile allows teams to:

• Make the complex simple – by working within a clear, structured framework, chaos turns to order.
• Maintain a clear overview – agile teams have a shared understanding of their progress towards their goals.
• Replicate success – if a team finds an effective way to deliver results, they can repurpose and share solutions across the organization.
• Create an aligned, purposeful culture – when hundreds of people across one organization form dozens of agile teams, they build a stable backbone, walking the same path towards the same goal.

"Agile organizations, viewed as living systems, have evolved to thrive in an unpredictable, rapidly changing environment. These organizations are both stable and dynamic. They focus on customers, fluidly adapt to environmental changes, and are open, inclusive, and nonhierarchical; they evolve continually and embrace uncertainty and ambiguity. Such organizations, we believe, are far better equiped than traditional ones for future."

- McKinsey & Company

What does it mean to be agile?

Many organizations incorporate a few agile processes to manage projects. But that doesn’t mean teams have fully understood and embraced the agile methodology. It could be that they’re ‘doing agile’ rather than actually ‘being agile’.

Here’s the difference between the two:

Doing agile

‘Doing agile’ is the misconception that if you do agile things your company will become agile and responsive to change. Organizations that have fallen into this trap may go through the motions of some agile processes, such as daily stand-ups, sprints, and retrospectives. Teams are structured to be small, cross-functional, and collaborative. But by stopping there, those teams don’t become truly agile and they may struggle to see results.

While agile ceremonies, tools, and structures are critical in implementation, they are only part of what makes an organization agile.

Being agile

‘Being agile’ means you incorporate the above activities but go beyond the processes. This means applying an agile mindset and agile values to all areas of the organization. Teams will need training to master the agile mindset and push through any challenges along the way. It takes more time and effort than simply doing agile, but it’s critical if you want to reap the benefits.

What’s an agile mindset?

Embracing an agile mindset means understanding and living its four core values. To be agile, you need to:

1. Respect people - Recognize that people are critical to the success of your organization. Ensure people share common goals, feel safe and empowered to share ideas, and adopt a ‘we’ versus ‘I’ mentality.
2. Optimize flow - Build in quality at each increment so you can identify issues and course-correct early. This helps maximize value and minimize waste while creating a consistent, sustainable flow of work.
3. Encourage innovation - Foster experimentation with collaboration, constructive feedback, and autonomy. Schedule time and space for creativity and ideas to flow.
4. Relentlessly improve - Keep in mind that there is no endpoint with the agile mindset. It’s about continuous improvement, so you need to continually reflect and improve future processes as part of an ongoing practice.

To take these values and make them the foundation of working across your organization, you need to combine agile processes with an agile mindset. Without the agile mindset, you’re not ‘being agile’, and your processes won’t deliver your organization’s full potential.

"The agile mindset is a thought process that involves undersatdning, collaborating, learning, and staying flexible to achieve high-performing results. By combining the agile mindset with processes and tools, team can adapt to change and deliver incremental value to their customers."

- Atlassian

Agile processes and tools aren’t enough

Agile processes, including the ceremonies, tools, and apps, are there to support the mindset of the team. But without getting the mindset right across your organization, you won’t be truly agile.

Fostering the agile mindset gives an organization the ability to rapidly move in any given direction at any given time to deliver the best value to customers. Teams who’ve mastered agile are usually:

• Autonomous and empowered to make decisions around the product and customer experience.
• Able to adapt to change quickly.
• Always willing to learn something new.

Engaged with a shared purpose and collaborative culture.

"It's about being able to pivot to change. Whether that's in terms of people, or resources or budget - whatever that looks like for an organization. If you're able to quickly shift from one area of focus to another before your competitor does, then you have a competitive advantage in the market."

- Sean Blake, Head of Marketing, Easy Agile

Common challenges to look out for as you move from doing agile to being agile

The sooner you can act and move from doing agile towards being agile, the sooner your customers, employees, and your bottom line will benefit.

Here are a few common challenges and tips to overcome them.

• People might hold onto old habits
  People find change hard, especially when habits are ingrained. You might find some people dig their heels in, clinging to the old way of doing things. It’s important to remember it can take time, and people will need support to learn new ways of working. Be sure to bring in plenty of opportunities for feedback and discussion so you can reiterate as a team to find a process that works for your organization.
• It’s not just the team who needs to be coached
  Being agile is a mindset for the entire organization, including managers and executives. If your leaders don’t understand and support agile, it will be hard to get traction and shift old processes and hierarchies. Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches need to spend time coaching leaders to develop new agile mindsets and capabilities.
• For many organizations, being agile requires a new style of management
  The traditional command-and-control management style may have worked in the industrial age. But now it’s a mismatch for the way organizations and people need to work today, and it doesn’t support the agile mindset. To be agile, teams need the trust, autonomy, and ability to take an idea through to execution without any roadblocks. Senior executives must get behind this multifaceted cultural-transformation effort for this to happen.

Are you ready to be agile?

Moving beyond agile processes to scale an agile mindset across an organization isn’t something you can tackle overnight. It takes time, effort, training, and leadership support to internalize agile values and move beyond the command mindset of the past.

You may face challenges along the way, you’ll discover there’s always more to learn, and you must be agile in your adoption of agile.

But the prize for true agility is significant, including increasing customer satisfaction, boosting employee engagement, and improving productivity - making it well worth the investment.

Agility helps modern organizations thrive through change in an uncertain and unpredictable world. For most of us, it’s no longer a desirable way of working - it’s essential.

Let's talk about the backlog refinement process, once known as backlog grooming. You might know the Pareto principle and the philosophy of doing 80% of the work with 20% effort. It sounds wonderful, right?

On the other hand, refining a product backlog, updating backlog items and estimates might seem like a luxurious activity one postpones until they’re free from other activities in the agile process.

However, that’s not the case. Refining the backlog is indispensable. Sometimes, the power lies in the details, and with backlog management, that couldn't be truer.

Backlog refinement resembles great chefs developing their new recipes. 🍳 That's because besides details, refining a backlog demands a great deal of filling in the gaps and adjusting.

Join us as we discuss what refining a backlog entails. We'll look at what it is, its importance, the details of how to do it, and some key tips.

First things first, let’s look at what backlog refinement is.

Eliminate your flat backlog with

Easy Agile TeamRhythm

Try Now

About backlog refinement

Backlog refinement is like pruning a plant: You discard the branches that are no longer necessary so you can help the plant grow the right way.

That means that you already have items in your backlog, but they might need some information or an update before they’re implemented. Also, some items might even need to be cut off from the backlog.

Refining the backlog saves time and money by ensuring that its items are ready for development at the right time. It also ensures that no customer-valuable item is forgotten. On the other hand, it guarantees that only customer-valuable items are implemented. All of this helps you retain customer focus.

Pick up your pruning shears, because we’re about to help you trim your backlog. ✂️

The Product Owner most likely schedules work sessions to refine the backlog.

These backlog refinement sessions should be regular, though you can refine the backlog more informally as long as it's an ongoing process. Besides the Product Owner, some of the Scrum team members can participate. Remember that the Development Team, the Scrum Master, and Product Owner are the Scrum Team. Although the Product Owner can update the backlog themselves, it's a great practice to involve the team.

Besides keeping the backlog up-to-date and complete, backlog refinement involves:

• Splitting broad user stories or other types of backlog items such as tasks or bugs, plus adding detail to them to improve comprehension
• Adding or reviewing estimates to issues, as estimation is crucial to sprint planning
• Ordering backlog issues to deliver high-priority ones in the next Scrum iteration

Important: Keep in mind that the customer ultimately determines the priorities. That’s one of the reasons why backlog refinement should be customer-centric.

Tools that help you keep your backlog customer-centric will also help you deliver better for your customers. Easy Agile TeamRhythm lets you view your backlog and sprints in the context of the user story map, so you the whole team can see at a glance the work that is most important to your users.

Now that you know what refining a backlog is and who’s involved, let’s cover how to do it.

How to refine a backlog

There are so many ways of refining a backlog that it would be impossible to give you the best one.

• You could refine — split and detail — first and estimate second, starting with the least understood items first.
• You could estimate first to conclude on items that demand refinement before estimation and only then refine high-effort items if necessary.
• You could use a dedicated tool to help you refine or estimate, such as Easy Agile TeamRhythm, or you could just rely on a spreadsheet or a whiteboard and pen.

When refining the backlog, the Product Owner and the involved team members pursue the following goals:

• Make sure the backlog is accurate, which means that it contains all the necessary items.
• Maintain the prioritization of those items.

Ensure the delivery of the most important items, which should be on top of the backlog.

In the course of refinement, those involved might need to revive the product vision and the product roadmap. It might also be helpful to create user personas and define acceptance criteria, especially for item detailing.

Do you know what a backlog item ready for a sprint looks like? If not, develop a definition of done as well as a definition of ready. Then, to achieve item readiness, work out items such as:

• Sharing an understanding of the acceptance criteria
• Agreeing on a structure for the full description of different kinds of item
• Defining a clear view of dependencies between items
• Identifying the subject matter expert for each item

Finally, you should refine high-priority items first. Those are the ones developers will implement first in the next sprint.

Remember that backlog refinement is the set of all activities that have to do with managing backlog items. But there’s a thing: Backlog refinement doesn't have a time-box. According to the Scrum framework, it's not one of the Scrum events. Instead, it's a continuous crusade, and it's not necessarily a meeting (although it can be).

As you get used to backlog refinement, you can use the following questions to evaluate your progress.

Backlog refinement checklist

While goals are nice to have, you need to carry out specific actions to achieve them. So, here's a checklist that you must regularly go through. You can use it to either evaluate if the backlog needs refinement or confirm that refinement is done for the moment.

• Does the backlog contain user stories or other kinds of items that no longer make sense?
• Did you elicit any user need that's not yet in an appropriate form of backlog item?
• Does your customer expect you to implement any urgent item that's at the bottom of the backlog?
• Did the importance of delivering any item change since the last time you looked at the backlog?
• Does the backlog have any item for which no agile estimate exists?
• Is any estimate outdated?
• Is any backlog item too broad to understand what developers should implement in the next sprint?

You can only claim to have a refined backlog when you answer "No" to all the above questions. Until then, keep working on it, and avoid the below traps.

WATCH ON DEMAND: Eliminate your flat backlog

What to avoid with backlog refinement

1. Ask more experienced team members to detail backlog items or provide estimates. For instance, junior developers aren't well-equipped to do this — talk with more senior team members about these topics.

2. Involve select team members. Talking with the entire team tends to just add noise. And, as we mentioned above, you should try to involve more experienced team members rather than more junior people.

3. Document your decisions.  This is terribly important. Human memory is unreliable. So, to repeat good decisions and avoid bad ones, document both over time.

4. Do not excessively detail backlog items. Or you risk developers not knowing what to do with them. A great way to avoid this is involving some members of the Development Team in backlog refinement.

5. You shouldn't refine backlog items currently under development. You should refine the backlog for the next sprint or subsequent sprints.

6. Don't refine the backlog of the current sprint until it ends. You might feel tempted to only refine backlog items until the very last minute. That isn't good. Unexpected things happen, such as busy agendas, and discussions that take longer than anticipated...as a result, you might not deliver what's expected.

7. Avoid disagreements on estimates.  That's usually a sign that refinement is lacking for that item. Listen to those people who suggest the highest or the lowest estimates. They're usually the ones who didn't understand the items because of either missing or too much information.

8. Get multiple people to weigh in on estimates.  Although only asking one person may speed up the estimation, that doesn’t demonstrate a shared understanding. And that's something you should be keen about in backlog refinement.

If you’re unsure whether you need to do this process, take a look at the below benefits.

The value of refining your backlog

Backlog refinement can save you time and money. Back in the old days, someone would basically engrave a requirement specification document in stone before development. With the rise of agile, that's ancient history.

A backlog contributes massively to the success of an agile project. It’s a living document, which means it changes over time. But while it changes, it must remain accurate. And there are no strict rules when it comes to refining a backlog. That means, for instance, that not every item requires detail.

However, the Product Owner should guarantee that the backlog items are ready for scheduling. 📅 And without backlog refinement, that would be a Herculean task.

Imagine meeting a sprint goal without:

• Enough information about backlog items or items with heavy, complex descriptions
• Outdated estimates or no estimates at all
• High-priority items forgotten at the tail of the backlog
• Items that reside only in people's heads or no longer represent value to the customer

Here’s what you would face:

• Crazy development calendars
• Undelivered items
• Items delivered late
• Insane budgets

That wouldn't definitely be a good prognostic for customer retention.

Backlog refinement is an essential process

If you think of space missions and compare them to backlog refinement, the backlog is your mission guide. 🚀 And unless you have a refined backlog, your mission guide will get you no farther than your backyard. 😨

Backlog refinement should help you in your quest to have a permanently relevant set of items in your backlog. And by relevant, we mean complete, valuable, detailed yet straightforward, recently estimated, and correctly ordered.

While it’s VERY easy to forget about the importance of backlog refinement, don't. Focusing on the current sprint is essential, but delivering a satisfactory product is the most important thing. And an appropriately refined backlog helps team spirits.

Additionally, you don't want to be that Product Owner who gets a bucket full of questions during a sprint planning meeting. That's a strong indication that backlog refinement failed epically.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm can help you refine user stories by enabling you to:

• Register estimation in user stories
• Drag and drop user stories to prioritize by customer value and business value

Try out these tips during backlog refinement. We’re sure you’ll love it, and if you need a hand, we’re here and happy to help.

Do you know the difference between agile vs. waterfall, and have you considered which is best for your business?

Don’t go chasing waterfalls — unless you’re seeking a project management methodology. 😁 The waterfall method is a common framework teams have utilized for years. But it isn’t the only way of doing things, and it may not be the best way, depending on the needs of your team.

In this post, we’ll cover the differences between agile and waterfall methodologies, including the pros and cons of each. We’ll also share a potential alternative called the hybrid method, which can provide the best of both worlds for certain teams.

Build a visual roadmap timeline of your Jira issues

Easy Agile Roadmaps

Try Now

Agile vs. waterfall

When it comes to agile vs. waterfall, these methodologies don’t share a lot in common. In many ways, agile is the answer to the limitations of the commonly used waterfall method. However, there are definitely still pros and cons to each framework.

Let’s dig into both of these methodologies in more detail.

The waterfall methodology

We’ll start off with the waterfall approach since it’s a little easier to explain. While the idea of a waterfall may sound majestic and bold, the waterfall method is fairly traditional and straightforward.

The waterfall model is used to describe traditional project management, where a project plan is laid out by a project manager before work begins. Project requirements and tasks are planned in advance and given to the team, who then work on one task and then the next until project delivery.

Tasks are completed in the order they were laid out in the original plan. The sequential order of tasks cascading from one to the next is what gives waterfall project management its name.

Waterfall is a widely used project management methodology, but it does have its limitations. The strict approach helps teams know what to expect through every step of a project, but it isn’t very adaptable, and it can lack input from the team as a whole.

This lack of flexibility has hindered modern teams. It makes it more difficult to switch gears if and when you need to. A predetermined plan doesn't leave much room for change, and it misses out on adapting to invaluable feedback from both stakeholders and customers.

Waterfall Pros

• Clear goals and objectives are provided at the outset.
• There’s a straightforward structure that’s repeated project after project.
• It’s easy for team members to understand what’s expected of them.
• There’s less general pressure on employees.
• It’s easier to learn the ropes, especially for new employees.
• Information is easily passed on to all team members.
• Success is measured by the completion of tasks, which provides faster gratification.
• Budgets can be more accurately predicted.
• The end result of a project is decided from the beginning, so the journey is clear for everyone involved.
• Most planning is led by one person.

Waterfall Cons

• The process is not as flexible as agile approaches.
• It’s difficult to foresee roadblocks and dependencies that could delay work.
• Work is not always evenly spread out across the team.
• Project overload is possible.
• Short-lived teams may ignore conflict for the sake of getting to the end of the project.
• It’s difficult to change directions or the scope of deliverables once a project begins.
• There’s less customer involvement throughout project or product development.
• Stakeholders may not see progress until the end of a project or until a final product is complete.
• There isn't an early testing phase to ensure a project or product is on the right track.

The agile methodology

Agile is an iterative approach that puts emphasis on testing and adapting. It uses early feedback and stakeholder involvement to determine the best possible path forward. There’s still a plan with agile, but it isn't rigid or strict, and it leaves plenty of room to adapt and grow along the way.

Easy Agile Roadmaps: The simplest and most flexible roadmapping tool for Jira

Try Now

The plan evolves as new information is acquired to ensure the end result meets customer and stakeholder needs. Adaptability plays a big role in agile practices, and that’s what has drawn so many teams to the methodology. The ability to adapt in the face of change is a sought-after strength today, given the pace at which change is occurring across technology, the economy, global markets, and more.

Agile Pros

• The entire team is involved in the planning.
• Feedback is central to the process.
• Customers and stakeholders are involved.
• The customer journey is top of mind when a decision is made.
• The team can adapt as new information is acquired.
• Changes can be made along the way to avoid roadblocks or stalled work.
• Each team member's capacity (workload) is continually assessed to prevent burnout.
• Long-standing teams continue to learn how to work together.
• Processes are continually improved upon throughout every phase of the project/product.
• All voices on a team, no matter the role, are heard when it comes time to gather retrospective feedback.

Agile Cons

• Agile techniques and terminology can be tough to grasp.
• It can take teams a while to learn proper agile methods.
• Agile teams may not get the support they require from management and business owners.
• Not all team members may buy into the agile framework, presenting a disconnect across the team.
• A lack of documentation can make the details unclear.
• Budgets can become unpredictable if it turns out the project/product needs to go in another direction.
• The scope of a project/product can continue to grow (scope creep).
• The many agile meetings take up a lot of time.
• It’s harder to find new employees who are experienced with agile methods.

Agile is a broad term that covers a number of different frameworks that utilize agile practices. Lean, DevOps, Kanban, and Scrum are all various forms of agile that fulfill different needs.

For example, the Scrum framework involves repeating sprints that are commonly used by agile software development teams. If you haven’t heard of Scrum before, this might be a lot to take in. 🤯

A Scrum takes two weeks, beginning with sprint planning, when the product owner makes prioritization decisions about which backlog items (tasks) should be accomplished in the upcoming sprint. From there, the team works on the specified tasks, guided by a Scrum Master who leads daily standup meetings to keep everyone informed of project/product progress. Lastly, a sprint review and sprint retrospective occur at the end of the sprint to ensure the team continually evolves and improves.

Easy Agile User Story Maps: Achieve smoother sprint planning & easier backlog refinement.

Try Now

Interested in learning about other popular agile methodologies? There are so many to choose from! We covered 8 popular development methodologies in a previous post.

The hybrid methodology

Does the choice need to be agile vs. waterfall? You might be thinking, can’t we put all of these benefits together? The hybrid agile approach can offer the best of both words for some teams.

A hybrid model blends the valuable techniques provided by both waterfall and agile frameworks. For example, you might begin with a set of agile sprints for prototyping and gathering feedback, followed by a single plan of action associated with non-agile techniques. It can be the best of both worlds, and it can serve as a stepping stone while a team attempts to make a complete agile transformation.

A hybrid approach often comes into play with agile project management and other non-traditional agile uses. Agile was originally designed for software development, but teams in all sorts of industries continually adopt aspects of agile. The agile methods observed by software developers don’t always work for other types of teams. Agile can be a difficult transition to make, especially when teams are used to things being done another way.

An approach that meets your needs

When choosing which approach is best for your team, business, or enterprise, take time to consider the needs of the team as well as your customers and stakeholders. Agile may be a tough transition to make, but if you believe the benefits will enhance your processes and help your business long-term, it might be time to make the switch. A hybrid approach can help you get there gradually without as many disruptions to your current processes.

Easy Agile is passionate about helping teams work better using  agile tools designed for Jira. If you want to learn more about agile and other methodologies, follow the Easy Agile blog. It’s filled with how-to guides, tips, and strategies — and if reading content isn’t for you, we have a podcast too! 📢

Agile retrospectives offer opportunities for introspection. As with many things in life, the end is almost as important as the beginning. That’s why it’s important to improve what went wrong throughout the iteration and repeat what went well.

The retrospective meeting should be held at regular intervals to analyze team processes and outcomes. Reflecting on the last sprint should help guide the next one.

Sprint retrospectives are also informal but structured. Informality is a typical characteristic of the retrospective meeting, which motivates problem-solving.

In this article, we’ll review what an agile retrospective is, how to lead it successfully, and how to use the retrospective format.

What is an agile retrospective?

An agile retrospective is also known as the sprint or sailboat retrospective.

The Scrum Guide provides a clear definition of the agile retrospective. The Guide says the agile team can use the sprint retrospective as an opportunity to gather rapid feedback for continuous improvement. Continuous improvement takes place through ongoing teamwork and work analysis.

During the meeting, the team discusses what went well and what didn’t. They should identify the good, that they will aim to repeat as well as the areas to adjust, so the next sprint can go more smoothly.

Here’s how the 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto describes retrospectives: “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly.”

How to implement a sprint retrospective format

You can either implement the agile retrospective after each sprint, quarter, or the entire project. However, you should have a retrospective at regular intervals to continue iteration and improvements.

Use a retrospective format for each meeting. Creating a retrospective board is a great place to start, it sets the scene for the team involved and they know exactly what is expected.

We've added retrospective boards to Easy Agile TeamRhythm to help you and your team through more of the agile cycle, from planning through to review.

Here’s how to plan the sprint retrospective:

1. Preparation

Like a standup meeting, your preparation time for the retrospective should take about 15 minutes. The retro is like a lean coffee meeting where the agenda is relatively unstructured but democratic. Everyone gets to contribute.

Ideally, you want to have a retrospective board where team members can capture feedback as it arises. Be sure to remind team members to add their thoughts to the board prior to the meeting.

The retrospective board helps guide the retro process through tasks where the team fell short or excelled with action items. It also helps to identify areas of improvement and the actions the group must apply to effect change.

If in-person team members don’t use software to facilitate their agile retrospective, they can use another technique. This technique usually involves a whiteboard, Post-Its, and markers to guide brainstorming throughout the meeting.

Whichever methodology (Scrum or Kanban) the scrum master uses, a visual representation helps facilitate the best possible outcomes for future workflows.

Hot tip 🔥

It is best to rope in a neutral facilitator or agile coach to guide this process. This technique should help encourage team members to participate and share without feeling pressured.

2. Use the retrospective template to guide your agenda format

The retrospective board helps direct the agenda for the meeting format. Whether you choose start, stop, continue, glad, sad, mad, or our team's personal favourite - high notes, low notes and keeping the beat. Make sure you customise it to suit your teams needs.

Typically, the process follows six steps:

2.1 Set the stage

Refresh your memory about themes and stories in the last sprint if necessary. Set a timer and give the team a little extra time to add any last minute thoughts or items that may be missing

At the start of the retrospective, the Scrum master should introduce the product owner, team members, and other relevant stakeholders.

Welcome everyone and let them know that their participation is valuable. Inform team members that honesty is critical in producing positive outcomes. Ensure new teams know that questions are welcome, and that sharing experiences is vital to a successful sprint retrospective.

Throw in an icebreaker to set the tone of the meeting. A brief game of “two truths and one lie” can quickly promote a relaxed atmosphere if you have enough time.

Let the team know the amount of time it should take to complete each section of the sprint review. To keep everyone on track, the timer can come in handy again here.

2.2 Celebrate the wins

Congratulate team members who excelled. Discuss posting success stories on LinkedIn or elsewhere before moving on with the sprint review. Interact with items made on the retro board, react with an emoji or leave a comment.

2.3 Gather data

Data gathering includes collecting information from team members about sprint retrospective problems. The purpose is for the team to uncover the root cause of the problems.

Team members begin this process by sharing sprint experiences. Whether the experience was good, bad, or ugly—share it. It’s always a good idea to capture how everyone is feeling, take a mood survey to understand the overall team feeling.

Share the processes you used and which milestones you accomplished. If team members applied new technologies, share how those went. If they used new tools, let everyone know the pros and cons of each tool. Whatever the experience, let everyone know what worked well and what was a disappointment.

The Scrum master can facilitate this phase by using the “five whys” methodology. The “five whys” essentially refers to asking why a problem occurred, five times. Repeating the question multiple times supports deep thinking to get to the root cause of the problem.

2.4 Brainstorm solutions

Once the team members identify the shortcomings of the previous sprint, they can brainstorm solutions.

The team meeting should now revolve around associations between problems and solutions. Linking problems and solutions involves understanding. Once the team understands their mistakes, they can brainstorm several solutions to fix each problem area with better action items.

Throw in as many ideas as possible to have several solutions for consideration. Once the team has alignment on the action item, be sure to capture this so the appropriate next steps can be taken.

The retrospective board in TeamRhythm sits alongside your work in Jira, so that retrospective items can be added as the sprint or version progresses. Action items from the retrospective can be turned into Jira issues so that items worth actioning aren’t lost at the end of the discussion.

The Scrum master should also ensure that the team has the authority to follow through with relevant solutions at this stage. If they don’t have the authority to solve problems, the Scrum master must bump the issue up to a higher level.

2.5 Select viable solutions

Not all solutions from the brainstorming phase will be viable — ask the Scrum team, including the product owner, to choose three promising solutions for each problem. You can use different techniques to narrow this process, and ask team members to vote. You might want to try a dot vote, or up vote by giving the solution a thumbs up.

The simple vote requires everyone to select the solution that resonates best with them in the follow-up activity. In the dot vote, meeting participants find the best three solutions by placing a dot on three of the ideas they believe hold the most value.

Lastly, the multiple vote system means that the scrum master gives everyone points. The scrum team must then give these points to one or more of the best ideas.

2.6 End the meeting

End the meeting on a positive note before continuing to the next sprint. Try to leave with:

• A detailed synopsis of the previous sprint
• A detailed sprint planning exercise for the next sprint meeting
• Clear action items and next steps
• Collaborate as a team to determine whether this outcome is effective or needs improvements for the next iteration

3. Sprint retrospective meeting outcomes

Software development teams can use the S.M.A.R.T. criteria to analyze their solutions. Getting the product owner's inputs is a valuable part of the retrospective meetings as they diversify priorities and perceptions

The agile coach or Scrum master takes the S.M.A.R.T. solutions and translates these into item actions. The Scrum master should ask team members to take responsibility for activities to promote ownership and encourage behavioral change.

Once the product owner agrees, each activity should then become part of the backlog.

How to achieve successful retrospectives from in-depth introspection

An in-depth introspection promotes continuous improvement and productivity. Following a retrospective template helps achieve these goals, while supporting integrated teamwork. The product owner also benefits from your team efforts with each sprint retrospective, which is a primary objective.

Gain team alignment with team retrospectives

Easy Agile TeamRhythm supports agile retrospectives, helping you and your team gain a shared understanding of the work, and how you work best together. Designed for Jira users, our goal is to help agile teams work together effectively.

Try Easy Agile TeamRhythm free for 30 days

Your company has finally committed to practicing Scrum. WOOT!! 🎉 The promised land is laid out before you — self-organizing teams, sustainable delivery pace, and autonomy to do the right thing for the product and the team. You can't wait to get started! (Spoiler alert: There's an agile release train in your future.)

That was three months ago. Today, your product development organization is a hot mess. Teams are delivering the wrong work at the right time. Code is stuck on a shelf waiting for another team to deliver a dependency. And upper management is thinking about pulling the plug and going back to the older waterfall days.

If you work in a large organization with 50+ software developers and engineers, Scrum can be a tough nut to crack. The larger the organization, the more likely you'll have cross-team dependencies, scheduling conflicts, and challenges creating transparency between the business, product, and engineering teams. But fear not...

SAFe to the rescue! SAFe is short for scaled agile framework. Intended to help large companies implement Scrum, SAFe provides a framework for coordinating work across many Scrum teams.

Part of the SAFe framework is the concept of an agile release train (ART). If you're not familiar with ARTs, you're in the right place. We'll explain what an ART is, why it helps large companies deliver software solutions more efficiently, and how you can start an ART at your company.

Want to empower your team to implement the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)?

Try Easy Agile Programs

Join a demo

So, what is an agile release train?

First, let's explain the train metaphor. A train goes down the tracks intending to reach a specific destination. Along the way, the train may stop at multiple depots and add new cargo or passengers. Your software solution is the train tracks. Team contributions to that solution are the new cargo you pick up at the depots. And, the destination is the business value delivered to your users. Simple enough, huh?

ARTs help a group of teams stay aligned on the business purpose of their work and coordinate the delivery of solutions. Your teams are probably organized by function or value stream. An ART identifies the input and timing of each team's contributions that help achieve the business objective for the value stream. Think of it as cross-functional coordination on steroids.

Here are some basic requirements for an ART:

• The schedule is fixed so the scope is variable. But don't panic — once your teams have a consistent velocity, confidence in the scope will increase.
• All teams must be on the same sprint and release cadence.
• Each team follows the values and principles in the Agile Manifesto.
• ARTs participate in planning events for program increments (PIs) and inspect and adapt (I&A) ceremonies, which are similar to retrospectives and system demos.
• Innovation and planning (IP) iterations must be regularly scheduled between program increments. This provides your large team of individual agile teams time to innovate, update infrastructure, or indulge in some specialized training or a hot tech conference. IP iterations also offer a nice buffer in case your PI gets behind schedule.

If your organization is large enough, you may need multiple agile release trains focused on independent value streams. If that's the case, you may need an additional level of coordination found in a solution train. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Principles of an agile release train

An Agile Release Train (ART) takes its cues from the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) to ensure that multiple agile teams can align and collaborate seamlessly. Here are the core principles that guide an Agile Release Train:

Fixed schedule

ARTs adhere to a predefined schedule to deliver work consistently. This schedule is organized through Program Increments (PIs), which are typically 12 weeks long. The fixed cadence helps teams plan and deliver work efficiently.

Bi-weekly cadence

Much like individual agile teams work in sprints, ARTs operate in two-week segments known as system increments. This regular rhythm facilitates continuous progress and rapid feedback cycles.

Known velocity

The train's capacity to produce work in a given PI—referred to as velocity—is derived from historical performance data. By dividing projects into smaller tasks, teams can prioritize and deliver essential features more effectively.

Develop on cadence, release on demand

While development follows a rigid schedule, the release date is flexible and depends on project completion. This approach allows teams to continuously provide value to customers without being restricted by fixed release dates.

Program increment planning

PI planning is a cornerstone event where all agile teams within the ART come together, usually in person, to establish strategic objectives for the upcoming increment. This collaborative planning ensures everyone is aligned and working towards common goals.

Innovation and planning

At the end of each PI, teams participate in an innovation and planning (IP) event. This period is dedicated to planning the next increment, engaging in educational activities, and addressing infrastructure needs.

Inspect and adapt

To foster continuous improvement, ARTs hold an inspect and adapt (IA) event at the end of every PI. Teams assess their progress and identify areas for improvement through a problem-solving workshop, ensuring that they are always refining their processes and delivering better results.

Roles in a SAFe agile release train

Generally, teams use an ART in a Scrum environment, but, SAFe and agile release train concepts can apply to any agile methodology, including extreme programming (XP), Lean, or Kanban. Regardless of your chosen agile methodology, there are specific roles required to run an ART.

Agile teams

You can't have an ART without agile teams. Thank you, Captain Obvious. 🙄

One difference between SAFe and traditional Scrum is that ARTs allow you to operate with teams dedicated to a specific function, like frontend or backend development, quality assurance, DevOps, security, and business or product functions. ART itself is cross-functional so your teams don't have to be.

Each team is required to have a Scrum Master and Product Owner, just like in Scrum.

Release train engineers (RTEs)

Like Scrum Masters help their team members follow Scrum principles and best practices, release train engineers are servant leaders who do the same for the agile release train. RTEs help ensure the proper execution of program increments, remove blockers, manage risk, and work with the teams on improvements.

Release train engineers typically report to an Agile Management Office, or in the case of Lean, the portfolio management team.

Product managers

While some traditional Scrum teams use both product managers and product owners, SAFe operates at such a scale that both roles are required. The product manager drives the vision, roadmap, and feature backlog while the product owner is responsible for defining the PI objective with the team and executing the functionality.

Easy Agile Programs enables Release Train Engineers and Program Managers to effectively manage programs to deliver alignment at scale.

Try Easy Agile Programs

System architects

Again, due to the scale at which SAFe teams operate, a system architect is required to design the high-level structure of the overall system, determine how each piece fits into the puzzle, and create stable integration points to bring data and processes into a centralized ERP.

Business owners

The business owners are responsible for achieving business outcomes like revenue or customer acquisition goals. As the primary stakeholder for ARTS, business owners operate at a strategic level and will participate in vision, roadmap, and program increment discussions. Their job is to ensure products are built to meet specific business objectives.

Customers

Customers are the ultimate economic buyers or value users of the solution. Their feedback and needs are critical to the success of the ART.

System teams

System teams typically assist in building and maintaining development, continuous integration, and test environments. They play a crucial role in ensuring that the infrastructure supports the ART effectively.

Shared services

Shared services include specialists necessary for the success of an ART but who cannot be dedicated to a specific train. These often include data security experts, information architects, site reliability engineers (SRE), database administrators (DBAs), and many more.

Get started with your agile release train

So, you're ready to jump on the ART! Great! Let's walk through the steps to get you started on your journey.

1. Start with training

Don't skimp on this one. You likely started your agile practices with some training. Do the same here. All the hard work and best intentions in the world can't help you if you don't have a solid understanding of the basics.

Along with training teams, you'll also want to train your leadership teams and executives. Just like when your company adopted agile principles, you'll want to make sure you have buy-in, an understanding of how agile release trains work, and the roles required to support them.

2. Identify your value streams

There are two types of value streams in SAFe: operational and development. An operational value stream focuses on delivering the value to end-users that was created by the development value stream. An example might be fulfilling an order from an eCommerce website.

A development value stream focuses on developing the business solution, like building that eCommerce website.

Identifying your value streams is important before selecting individuals and teams to work on the value stream and filling the additional roles required for the ART. Once the players have been chosen, you're ready to start planning.

3. Prepare the program increment backlog

It's time to refine your program backlog and get ready for PI planning. Planning and refining are best when you can meet face-to-face, but sometimes in large organizations, that's impossible. If you have a distributed team, make sure you have a good backlog tool like Jira to help facilitate virtual meetings.

🚨 Looking for the complete PI Planning solution for Jira?

Try Easy Agile Programs

Ideal for distributed, remote or face-to-face Program Increment Planning.

Join a demo!

Create your user stories at the program level to fit in a two-week timebox and plan your initial release. Until your teams have established a predictable velocity, leave some wiggle room in the iteration.

4. Start the program increment

Now, it's Scrum as usual. You have your sprint ready to go — just execute it like normal. At the end of the sprint, you can add your teams' contribution to the release train.

5. Rinse and repeat

Agile release trains are a continuous, iterative delivery mechanism. Just like traditional Scrum, your teams will build, release, learn, and then start building again. Don't forget to schedule an innovation and planning iteration to give the team a break from the train and time to improve their systems or their team.

Are you ready to jump on board?

SAFe and agile release trains help teams maintain agile development practices as they scale up in size. What may look complicated at first glance is actually a well-orchestrated process designed for team synchronization according to business value streams.

Use the Scrum knowledge you have within the individual teams, and then train in SAFe practices and get prepared to build your first agile release train. You'll learn by doing but save yourself and your company some headaches and money and invest in training first.

We've linked to some great learning articles throughout this piece, but here are a few more to help you jumpstart your SAFe learning:

• The Ultimate Guide to PI Planning [2021 SAFe Edition]
• SAFe Program Board 101: Everything You Need To Know
• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) 5.0 — The Easy Agile Review
• Streamline your workflows with better PI Planning software
• How to prepare for distributed PI Planning

Good luck on your agile journey and stay SAFe! (Too corny??🤦🏽‍♀️)

At Easy Agile, we embrace agile principles (of course), and we strive to help software development teams put agile methodologies into practice. However, with so much to get done each day, it's easy to lose sight of the core principles of the agile manifesto.

You're probably thinking that you read the agile principles before and now put them into practice...all day, every day. Why do we need to revisit them?

You don't need to memorize the principles. They're much more of a guiding light than a rote process. But lining up the agile principles against your everyday agile practices provides reinforcement that you're putting them into action. This also helps you identify areas for improvement. 🙌

The continued relevance of the agile manifesto's principles

The agile manifesto focuses on:

• Continuous improvement by responding to feedback and change
• Allowing software developers and cross-functional teams to organize in a way that embraces collaboration and interaction
• Involving customers in the development process and responding to their feedback

The manifesto outlines 12 agile principles which are the bread and butter of agile software development. We'd like to provide practical context to these agile principles, so we're going to organize them into three categories — building working software by being organized, helping teams collaborate, and tactics for keeping customers happy.

Getting organized so you can build working software

The first few agile principles we'll review revolve around the concept of working software — a product your customers can use as early in the software development process as possible. You’ll adapt it as you get feedback about what’s working well and what could be improved. This is in contrast to a waterfall methodology to development, which is a more linear approach that typically does not allow for iterative updates.

Creating working software you can continuously update is one goal. But, that's easier said than done without the help of purpose-built tools like Jira, whose goal is to help agile teams manage their chosen agile framework, whether it be Kanban or Scrum. (You can read our guide on the differences between Kanban and Scrum...or how to use them together. 💪)

Now, let’s look at which of the 12 agile principles fall into this category — #3, #7, and #8 — and how Jira helps implement a framework that adheres to them.

Agile principle #3

"Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale."

Atlassian (the makers of Jira) sums up the embodiment of this principle perfectly in its definition of a sprint: "A sprint is a short, time-boxed period when a Scrum team works to complete a set amount of work."

While agile sprints run over a short period of time, running them smoothly takes a lot of work for product owners and software developers. Luckily, Jira provides ways to streamline that work — check out our guide on automating parts of your sprint.

Agile principle #7

"Working software is the primary measure of progress."

Sprints can help you ensure that your team delivers working software incrementally. If planned well enough, a sprint can serve as a stopping point for the release of your next batch of features and functionality to your end-users.

Agile principle #8

"Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely."

Agile frameworks like Scrum can help measure if a team is maintaining a consistent pace. Within sprints, effort can be measured in different ways like agile story points. As sprints are completed, Jira automatically creates a visual report of how many story points a team is completing from sprint to sprint in its velocity chart.

Time for team collaboration

You're an agile team delivering working software and using a super-tool like Jira to plan your work and track your progress. But you need a human touch to truly follow agile values. Please welcome agile principles #4, #6, #11, #5, and #12 to the stage.

Agile principle #4

"Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project."

Daily stand up meetings are a manifestation of this principle. In this meeting, each team member addressed three topics: (1) what they worked on yesterday; (2) what they're working on today; and (3) what is preventing them from making progress today.

Agile principle #6

"The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation."

Whether it's in an in-person or remote meeting, conveying information is tricky — but (phew) we've already addressed that with practices like daily sprints and velocity charts to exchange information across team members and to visually review team progress. And you'll soon see other ways that agile software development teams organize and communicate with each other.

Agile principle #11

"The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams."

Well, first, what exactly is a self-organizing team? It does not need outside direction or micromanagement to figure out what to work on and how that work gets defined and prioritized. These teams figure out how to plan their work, iterate to deliver that work, and then collaborate on how to continually improve. The agile ceremonies of Scrum — stand up, sprint planning, sprint review, and retrospective — are a working example of this.

Agile principle #5

"Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done."

Ok, so we went out of order on this principle — but for good reason. Following principle #11 makes sense because good self-organized teams are inherently motivated. They work together to figure out how to get the job done and to help each other when someone is stuck. That said, it's important to have defined roles in an agile team, like a Scrum master who can motivate and give feedback to team members.

Agile principle #12

"At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly."

This principle perfectly describes a retrospective — a team meeting to reflect on your most recent sprint or iteration of work and to discuss how to improve for the next one. By answering these questions: (1) What went well?; (2) What could have gone better?; and (3) What can we adjust to improve for next time? your team is collaborating and interacting in an effort to become more effective.

Achieving customer satisfaction

Last, but certainly not least, in the agile principles are customer needs. Who is your customer? What are their needs? How do you respond to their feedback to make sure you provide a working product that they love? Enter principles #1, #2, #9, and #10.

Agile principle #1

"Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software."

It turns out that to satisfy your customer, you need to understand who your customer is. 😉 This takes work. A proven methodology for figuring out who your customers are is to create customer personas. These are fictionalized profiles of your customers that document things like their behavioral patterns, their shared pain points, and what their general demographic information looks like.

Agile principle #2

"Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage."

Requirements can't be effectively changed unless they are defined and made visible to stakeholders for feedback. Even if that feedback causes change late in a development cycle, that's ok! (You'll probably also receive change-inducing feedback on the working software you've already delivered. 😎) Tools like a product roadmap or a user story map that provide visual views of your product backlog help give your customers and stakeholders a platform to have the ability to provide feedback.

Agile principle #9

"Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility."

One word: retrospective.

​Ok, two more words: sprint review.

In the context of principle #9, the retrospective and sprint review are two agile ceremonies to use to continually adjust your software's quality and design to best meet your customers’ needs.

Agile principle #10

"Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential."

Imagine you had views of your customer profiles (personas), a visual mapping of their journey through your product (user story map), and a prioritized view of your plan to deliver your product (roadmap). What a time to be alive! If you're doing all three, chances are your team has pretty great insights into whether or not you're getting the right work done. 💪

Putting the 12 agile principles into action

Now you understand how the agile principles have been formed into agile frameworks and how tools like Jira can help agile teams run with those frameworks. We've also mentioned three effective ways to put these principles into action, and our products make it easy to do.

• Easy Agile TeamRhythm supports agile teams from planning through to review with features that support user story mapping, backlog refinement, sprint and version planning, and team retrospectives.
• Easy Agile Personas for Jira provides teams with a customer-centric approach to backlog refinement.
• Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira gives visual insights for teams and stakeholders around the vision and plan for a product.
• Easy Agile Programs is a complete PI Planning solution that makes scaled cross-team planning and execution easy.

Check out all of our agile solutions in Atlassian's marketplace!

Agile software development is like a roadmap for getting software done right. As highlighted in the agile manifesto, it prioritizes real conversations over tools, delivering working software instead of drowning in documentation, collaborating with customers rather than just negotiating contracts, and being quick to adapt to change. The manifesto emphasizes the power of collaboration within cross-functional teams, making it relevant for project management in various contexts.

Think of agile as a mindset, not just a method. It empowers project teams to give and receive feedback in a friendly, iterative environment that leads to great results. While it gained popularity in software development, agile principles can actually work wonders for any project team. Whether it’s in construction management, content marketing, or even planning weddings, agile has you covered.

Let’s dive into why agile project management is a great fit for any team. We’ll explore how its principles can seamlessly fit into your project processes. Remember, it doesn't matter which agile framework—like Scrum or Kanban—you choose, as long as it suits your team. In short:

• Agile principles are perfect for team cooperation.
• Agile workflows for project teams are conducive to continuous iteration and improvement.
• The framework you choose, Scrum or Kanban, is less important than your team mindset.
• Using agile project management across your organization increases visibility and coordination.

Agile principles in project management

The core principles of agile — collaboration, empowerment, and transparency — are ideal for project management. No matter the type of team, the goal should be continuous improvement. Teams meet this goal by working together with an iterative approach to fulfill their projects.

Agile is a mindset of adaptability, sharing progress, and learning from what worked and what didn't. You improve as you go.

Thomas Edison encapsulates the spirit of an iterative approach perfectly: “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work.” 💡It's this attitude that is the agile mindset.

Entities such as the Project Management Institute espouse the virtues of agile project management and its impact on teams’ collaboration:

• Teams are responsible for project delivery and self-organize in a way to maximize their opportunities for success.
• Agile project managers encourage discussion of frameworks and processes, but also encourage independent thinking.
• Agile values foster trust and healthy working relationships.
• As a decision-making framework, agile project management promotes accountability while driving continuous decision-making and delivery.

Agile workflows for project teams

How can a traditional project team become self-organizing enough to become more agile? Let's step through a Scrum workflow in the context of a general project.

Backlog

Development teams work from a product backlog, which is a list of prioritized features desired by a customer. But this list doesn't have to be a set of software features. It can be any set of tasks or outputs that a project team needs to complete.

Sprint planning meeting

Agile teams work in sprints, which are set periods of time (e.g., two weeks) to complete an agreed-upon amount of work. During sprint planning, the team reviews and discusses the top priorities from the backlog. They then decide what can be delivered in the sprint and commit to that work.

Let's use a marketing team working on a campaign as a non-typical example. In a traditional project management setting, the team may take a waterfall approach. They would create a months-long content calendar of social media, blog articles, videos, and other content. Under agile, they would only commit to the next two weeks of content production before deciding what comes next.

Stand-Ups

A stand-up is a daily meeting of team members. During it, each member answers three questions:

• What did you work on yesterday?
• What are you going to work on today?
• Are there any issues blocking your work from being completed?

The questions provide each person the opportunity to share their progress and to provide support in case they can unblock a teammate's work by helping to resolve their issue.

Sprint review

When the sprint is completed, teams meet to review and demo the work they just finished. In our marketing case, it can be a time for the team to get together to watch their content videos, read the comments and feedback from their social media posts, and review key metrics from all of their content.

Sprint retrospectives

Product development teams meet after each sprint to discuss how they might improve things for their next sprint. In this meeting, the team discusses:

• What went well?
• What didn't go so well?
• What can we improve going forward?

Suppose your marketing team had a post go unexpectedly viral. Why was it so effective? What can we learn from that to adjust the next two weeks of content? These are the types of questions to ask yourselves so you can continue to iterate and to learn together as a team.

Scrum or Kanban?

The workflow outlined above is a typical agile Scrum framework. However, it does not have to be the way agile practices are implemented in project management. Different types of projects may call for different frameworks. For example, in Scrum, roles are more clearly defined than in Kanban.

Scrum

A Scrum team is made of specific roles that are tasked with different responsibilities for moving the team through the development process. According to the Scrum Guide:

• Developers create a plan for each sprint iteration, define completeness of work, adapt their plan each day, and hold each other accountable.
• A product owner is responsible for managing the product backlog by communicating product goals, prioritizing items, and providing transparency into the full backlog.
• The Scrum master coaches and guides the team in its adoption of Scrum.

Kanban

Some projects may be more suited for Kanban as compared to Scrum. There are key differences between the two frameworks that may influence a team's approach to agile project management:

• Continuous workflow vs. fixed sprint iterations
• Continuous delivery vs. delivery after the completion of each sprint
• No set roles vs. defined scrum roles

Kanban teams use a Kanban board to visualize their tasks and to limit the amount of work that is in progress at a given time.

The agile framework you use, whether it is Scrum or Kanban, is less important than your team’s shared understanding of how you work together to achieve common goals. The beauty of an agile approach is its conduciveness to tweaking your framework and how you use it as you iterate and retrospect.

Agile project management for your whole organization

As software development teams continue to embrace agile processes, they can encourage other teams to join them. Using agile in other departments empowers those teams’ ability to collaborate. It also creates a shared sense of unity across your entire organization because you’re all applying the same methodology to get to each of your goals.

Try a daily stand-up for department leads to improve cross-organizational communication. Keep it short and to the point, focusing on the topics that will help the work progress.

Agile planning is a critical phase of the agile process, as it determines the team’s priorities and sets the tone for the work to come. The planning process helps agile software development and other product development teams sort through new information, adapt to roadblocks, and address evolving customer needs.

Agile is an iterative process that helps teams reduce waste and maximize efficiency for the ultimate goal of bringing value to customers. This customer-first approach helps teams make informed choices throughout the development process — choices that continually and consistently provide value to stakeholders.

It’s the opposite of traditional project planning, which takes a step-by-step waterfall approach. For many years, the method dominated project planning with detailed plans laid out at the beginning of a project that had to be adhered to rigidly. This may move a project or product forward, but it neglects to account for any new developments that could occur outside of the “master plan.”

And what about stakeholders? The best part of the agile process is that stakeholders can be brought in at every turn. You don’t need to guess whether or not you’re making the right decisions — you can find out every step of the way by directly including stakeholders in your process. You can adapt your plan as you need to based on what will provide the most value to customers at any time.

Yet, even if you are part of a seasoned agile team, there are still hiccups to overcome and processes to finetune. This post will outline some unproductive agile planning mistakes teams make, including how agile teams can avoid these common pitfalls.

Agile Planning Mistake #1: Not being on the same page as stakeholders

Do you involve stakeholders in your planning process? Do they understand your goals and why you are making each decision? Working directly with stakeholders will help you gain a clear view of what your customers need and want to determine what should be done when.

Never assume you’re on the same page as your stakeholders. They live in a different world than the one you are deeply embedded in, and they may not have the same experience with the agile process, your planning methods, or the agile tools your team uses.

Ensure you never make commitments the team can’t keep. What you thought would provide the most value during the planning phase could be completely different a couple of weeks later.

In order to produce deliverables that meet stakeholder expectations, you need to agree on what those expectations are. Involve your stakeholders in planning, but ensure everyone understands that expectations could evolve throughout the process based on new information gained from successes, failures, and customer responses.

Agile Planning Mistake #2: Using bland, flat product maps

Flat product backlogs are bland and boring 😴. Think carrot cake without icing. They lack the detail and functionality needed to realize the full story of your product backlog.

Plus, once you have more than a handful of items, they become overwhelming and difficult to organize in a meaningful way. It becomes less clear which item is the most important and more difficult to ensure your decisions align with the larger goal of the project.

When you plan out your roadmap, it needs context, and you must be able to clearly see the customer journey. User story maps visualize the customer journey in the planning process and throughout the entire process of product development. They utilize user stories — the smallest unit of work that can bring value to the customer — so you can plan and organize the backlog from the customer’s perspective.

📕 Read our ultimate guide to user story maps to learn more.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm transforms your flat product backlog into an impactful visual tool. Product owners and team members can plan core user activities, manage epics inside the story map, order user stories by priority, and edit story summaries — all while integrating directly with your Jira agile boards.

Agile Planning Mistake #3: Not allowing the plan to live, breathe, and adapt

Agile methodology is an iterative approach. This means your agile planning needs to leave room for changes. Your plan should be able to grow and adapt as you progress with each sprint or product roadmap.

At the beginning of a sprint, you lack the information needed to see the full picture. You don’t have everything you need to build the perfect solution, and that’s okay. It’s all part of the process. Spending hours or days trying to iron out the perfect plan just wastes time that could be better spent learning and solving problems as they come.

You may need to alter your plan after a roadblock comes up in a daily stand-up, or you may learn about a customer concern that completely changes your direction. Iterations are inevitable and welcomed! They help you keep pace with incoming information as you learn from each other, stakeholders, and your customers.

Agile planning isn’t a promise. It’s an outline that will help you reach your goal, and that changes with your goals and circumstances.

Agile Planning Mistake #4: Not incorporating retrospective insights in the following planning session

Retrospectives are an essential piece of the agile process. They give teams a chance to reflect on everything that occurred in an individual sprint or after the completion of a product.

An effective retrospective asks the entire team key questions that can improve the process next time around. What went well? What’s worth repeating again? What didn’t go so well? What could be improved upon next time? What roadblocks or dependencies developed? What did you learn? How did you feel at the end of the sprint?

A retrospective provides insights that will improve efficiency, teamwork and team dynamics, the effectiveness of tools, and communication with stakeholders.

Simply holding a retrospective or collecting retrospective feedback is not enough to gain value. You need to ensure you’re incorporating the feedback into the following sprint planning meeting. The next iteration will be all the better for the time you spend reflecting and improving based upon what you learned.

Agile Planning Mistake #5: Choosing tools that don’t take a customer-centric approach

Whether your team uses a Scrum process, kanban boards, or agile methods, the tools you choose should always be customer-focused. And you need to continue using them in a way that keeps the customer at the forefront of decision making.

Teams can fall into a trap believing they’re focusing on the customer when they aren’t doing much of anything beyond following simple agile methods and generic processes. Customers need to be embedded in your development process right from the planning phase so that every decision a team member makes considers customer needs first.

Choose planning tools that help your entire team get to the heart of what makes your customers tick, and always check in to ensure you are making decisions in line with your customers.

For example, Personas provide a deep understanding of what customers want, need, don’t want, etc. They reveal key information about customer pain points, desires, demographics, goals, shopping patterns, and much more. We highly suggest developing customer Personas to get a rich picture of all the people who will use your product, but it’s not enough to just have Personas lying around.

You need to bring these Personas into your agile planning process and keep them front and center as you complete issues and continue to develop your product.

Easy Agile Personas for Jira helps you create and store Personas within Jira, so you can plan based on customer needs in real-time. The tool will help you empathize with customers in order to make decisions that provide the most value to users at any moment. All of our Easy Agile Jira plugins are customer-focused and designed to keep the customer top-of-mind throughout the product development process.

Learn more on the Easy Agile blog

There’s plenty more where this came from. Easy Agile is dedicated to helping teams work better using agile. We make simple, collaborative, customer-focused plugins for Jira.

We regularly publish lists of tools, advice articles, and how-to guides for agile teams. If you work with Jira, you’ll find our resources are especially helpful in navigating the ins and outs of product development and the Jira plugins that will improve the way your team collaborates.

We’re off to the races! 🏃🏃‍♀️ Sprints are a key component of agile methodology. A sprint is a predefined time period in which agile teams work together towards an agreed-upon sprint goal. There are four types of agile meetings that occur over the course of a sprint, and each is vital to ensuring the success of the agile process. It’s all about sprinting through a predetermined amount of work to get to the finish line, where you learn from your process and begin the race again (only better off because of what you learned during the previous sprint).

Agile meetings are used to get team members, leaders, and stakeholders on the same page, and they guide the process of an agile sprint or Scrum.

This post will cover the four key agile meetings, which include sprint planning, daily standups, sprint reviews, and sprint retrospectives. Plus, we’ll discuss a bonus agile meeting that’s utilized for backlog refinement.

Agile meetings vs. Scrum meetings

Scrum is an agile methodology that’s most commonly used in software development. Scrum meetings are technically a type of agile meeting, but they have more specific parameters designed to fit within the Scrum framework. The process revolves around a 2-4 week sprint involving a product owner, Scrum Master, and the entire Scrum team.

We covered Scrum meetings (ceremonies) in detail in another article. For the purposes of this post, we’ll focus on the four main agile meeting types. These processes and best practices can be applied across multiple agile methodologies, including Scrum and Kanban. This framework can also be applied across industries beyond software development and can adapt to the needs of most teams.

Simply put: Scrum has a more rigid framework that follows four ceremonies/meetings. The agile process is much the same, with four very similar meetings, but there’s more flexibility to adjust the time frame of the sprint and adapt the process when not following Scrum guidelines specifically. Okay, maybe that’s still not simply put, but it wouldn’t be agile if it was linear and straightforward.

The 4 types of agile meetings

There are four central agile meetings: sprint planning, daily standups, sprint reviews, and sprint retrospective meetings. A sprint starts with a sprint planning meeting. Each day, a daily standup meeting is held. Finally, at the end of the sprint, a sprint review and retrospective are held. The process repeats with new springs until the product, project, or work is complete.

1. Sprint planning meeting

The sprint planning meeting occurs at the beginning of a sprint and involves the entire team. In sprint planning, the entire team meets to discuss and agree upon which work tasks (backlog items) should be moved to the sprint backlog — the items that need to be completed by the end of the sprint. During the meeting, sprint goals are determined, and the team aligns on expectations.

Without a sprint planning meeting to outline the sprint backlog (tasks that need to be completed), the team will waste time during the sprint trying to determine which work takes precedent.

Sprint planning mistakes to avoid:

• Starting planning without a refined backlog
• Not being on the same page as your stakeholders
• Ignoring the customer and the customer journey when making plans
• Creating a rigid plan that doesn’t have room to grow or adapt
• Using bland, flat product maps that lack critical context
• Failing to incorporate retrospective insights in the following planning session

Learn more about common agile planning mistakes and how your development team can avoid these pitfalls.

2. Daily standup meeting

The daily standup meeting occurs every day of the sprint. In the Scrum process, this meeting might also be called the daily Scrum meeting. It’s a chance for the team to connect about the work that was completed the previous day and what each person or team plans to complete over the course of the next 24 hours.

The meeting aims to answer three important questions:

• What work was completed since the last standup to help the team reach the sprint goal?
• What work do you plan to complete today?
• Is there anything currently in your way or hindering your progress?

This is a good time to address any bottlenecks. If work planned from the previous day wasn’t completed, what caused the delay, and how can the team work together to solve any problems keeping the work from moving forward?

A standup meeting is short and to the point so everyone can get back to the work they hope to complete. So short that it’s often recommended participants stand for the duration of the meeting. Hence the name daily standup. It includes all team members and ideally takes place at the same time every day to ensure everyone can always attend.

Daily standup mistakes to avoid:

• Not keeping track of the time during the meeting
• Continually going over the allotted meeting time
• Rambling participants who aren’t prepared to answer the meeting’s key questions
• Skipping the meeting due to lack of time
• Team members showing up late to the meeting or missing it altogether
• Allowing the loudest voices to overshadow the rest of the team
• Letting someone state the same task on multiple consecutive days
• Failing to address potential bottlenecks
• Assigning work beyond a person's capacity

3. Sprint review meeting

The sprint review is an opportunity for the team to showcase the work they accomplished during the sprint. This meeting might be an internal presentation or a more formal demo to stakeholders, depending on the needs of the project and how far along work is.

Sprint review mistakes to avoid:

• Not properly preparing for the meeting or demonstration
• Not bringing stakeholders in on your process
• Failing to demonstrate how the work brings value to the customer
• Exaggerating or embellishing successes
• Failing to address any problems and how they were solved
• Not incorporating sprint review feedback into the next sprint planning meeting

4. Sprint retrospective meeting

The retrospective is a crucial part of the agile process. The meeting comes at the end of the sprint, bringing the entire team together to assess their processes and discuss how they can improve next time.

Which aspects of the sprint went well, and what can you learn from that success? What didn’t go so well, and what bottlenecks did the team hit? What could be done better next time? Since agile is all about learning and iterating, there are lessons to be learned after each sprint. Everything from the good to the bad to the mediocre can be transformed into actionable improvements.

Retrospective mistakes to avoid:

• Blaming individual team members for bottlenecks
• Allowing only the loudest voices to provide insight
• Failing to empower the softer voices in the room
• Repeating the same questions over and over without changing things up
• Allowing the retrospective to run too long (aim for two hours for a two-week sprint)
• Skipping a retrospective due to a lack of time or resources
• Forgetting about or not including stakeholder insights or needs
• Failing to improve upon the sprint retrospective process (retrospective the retrospective!)
• Failing to incorporate retrospective insights in the next sprint

Bonus: Backlog refinement meeting

It could be argued that there’s a fifth agile meeting, especially in the product development world. Before the sprint planning meeting, the product owner must create a product backlog, which comprises all of the tasks and items the team needs to complete in order to fully develop the end product or project. The items include user stories, bug fixes, features, and other tasks that must be addressed to achieve the end goal.

Backlog refinement prepares the backlog for sprint planning by ordering items to deliver the most impact over the next sprint. During backlog refinement, a product owner ensures that product backlog items contain enough information, detail, and prioritization for the team to make smart decisions about what to tackle when.

A meeting to refine the backlog may occur before sprint planning begins, depending on the current state of the product backlog. Outside of the product development industry, the product backlog might be akin to a master project task list.

Backlog refinement meeting mistakes to avoid:

• Not completing backlog refinement in time for sprint planning
• Leaving too much backlog refinement for the planning meeting
• Failing to prioritize items that provide customer value
• Not incorporating new stakeholder feedback, questions, and concerns

Agile meetings: Final review

So there you have it! The four key agile meetings are sprint planning, daily standups, sprint reviews, and sprint retrospectives, with an honorable mention going out to backlog refinement.

Let’s review each meeting’s purpose:

• Sprint planning gets everyone on the same page about what needs to be accomplished over the course of the coming sprint.
• Daily standups ensure the team stays on track and helps them address and resolve any potential bottlenecks.
• Sprint reviews are an opportunity for the team to showcase the work accomplished during the sprint to stakeholders and receive critical feedback.
• Sprint retrospectives allow the team to come together to discuss what went well, what didn’t go well, and how they can improve next time.
• Backlog refinement prepares the backlog for sprint planning in order to deliver the most impact over the next sprint.

Hold effective agile meetings with Easy Agile

Easy Agile is committed to helping teams work better with agile. Easy Agile builds products specifically designed for Jira users to help agile teams work more efficiently and effectively.

We regularly publish lists of tools, advice articles, and how-to guides for agile teams. If you work with Jira, you’ll find our resources are especially helpful in navigating the ins and outs of product development and the Jira apps that will improve the way your team collaborates.

“Agile” is a simple word that means quite a lot today. What was once resigned to software developers and product development is now commonplace in many businesses, and agile implementation is showing no sign of slowing down.

It all boils down to this: Businesses today must be able to adapt fast.

The rigid approaches that worked for years don’t fit our rapidly changing business landscapes. Businesses of all shapes and sizes need to continually adapt to changing requirements, the changing needs of a global economy, cultural shifts, and evolving technological advancements.

It’s clear that agile is the way of the future, but how do you implement such a massive change across an organization, especially enterprises? Do you need a top-down approach, a bottom-up approach, or something in between? Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of agile and how to choose the best agile implementation approach.

Are you practicing SAFe®?

Bring the SAFe® Program Board into Jira

Try Easy Agile Programs

Why switch to an agile approach?

We’ve covered the benefits of agile in detail in our Beginner's Guide to Agile Methodology, but let’s recap some of the key points and why so many businesses are choosing to make the switch.

Agile practices focus on an iterative approach that continually adapts to new information and circumstances. By contrast, traditional project management generally adopts a waterfall approach — the project manager lays out a plan at the beginning of a project that the project team is expected to follow to the letter.

The problem with the traditional project management process is that it leaves little room to quickly grow and evolve. Agile project management and agile software development, on the other hand, need feedback and iterations at every turn. Agile teams test early and often to ensure they are on the right path, and they make adjustments in real-time.

The benefits of agile methods are far-reaching — that’s why we love it! Though it may take time to implement, agile is a worthy investment for any future-focused organization.

Additional benefits of agile:

• Managers can more easily account for the capacity of individuals and entire teams.
• The team can better manage work in progress (WIP).
• Everyone can clearly visualize the prioritization of tasks.
• Bottlenecks or roadblocks are addressed before they halt progress.
• Wasteful processes are eliminated or changed to improve efficiency.
• Multiple voices are included in the decision-making process.
• Teams can make iterations on products or projects in real-time.
• Stakeholders, customers, and end users are involved in your processes.
• Teams can provide continuous delivery to customers and stakeholders.
• Collaboration and teamwork improve.

With Easy Agile Programs you can equip your distributed or co-located teams to implement the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) without leaving Jira.

Join a demo

Agile implementation: Top-down or bottom-up?

So, you believe in agile and you’re ready to make it happen, but what’s the best approach? Do you implement it from the top-down or bottom-up? Let’s find out!

A top-down approach to agile implementation starts with those in charge. It often begins with management or business owners who hear about the benefits of agile and want their business to adopt agile practices. The problem is, when an idea only comes from the top, it can catch the rest of the organization off guard. If those in charge don’t give enough notice or provide all of the necessary resources and time to implement new ways of working, employees can become resentful and push back against the change.

On the other hand, when agile implementation comes from the bottom-up, leadership can push back. Teams and team leaders may want to improve their processes and adopt new ways of working, but they may not get adequate support or resources when they need them. It can take time to convince those in charge of the benefits of agile, which can take away from the time needed to actually learn and implement agile practices.

A hybrid approach

The good news is you don’t need to pick just one. The best approach for your business may turn out to be a hybrid approach. The more people you have on board, the better.

Agile implementation is easiest and most effective when as many people as possible buy into the process. It’s best if you have buy-in throughout multiple levels of your organization, from employees to managers to owners to CEOs.

Push-back on change is quite common in organizations, no matter the industry. It’s important to have people throughout the company who believe in the value of agile, are passionate about agile processes, and are excited about the possibilities agile presents.

Choosing an agile framework

As you implement agile principles, you’ll need to choose the framework that works best for your team. Depending on the needs of your team and organization, you may choose to adopt one framework or establish a mixture of frameworks.

Below, we’ll outline a few popular agile methodologies.

Scrum

Scrum is a strange word that’s very popular as a software development process. It’s a series of events that revolve around repeating sprints. One sprint (or Scrum) begins with sprint planning. The product owner reviews the product backlog, which represents all of the work that needs to be completed. They choose which items/tasks are the most important for the upcoming sprint and move those tasks into the sprint backlog.

Next, the development team, guided by the Scrum Master, works over a two-week span to complete the sprint backlog. Each day, the team meets for daily standups, which allow the team to go over what was accomplished over the previous 24 hours and discuss any possible roadblocks that stand in the way of the team completing work.

Lastly, the team completes a sprint review to gather feedback from stakeholders. They also conduct a sprint retrospective to discuss what went well and what didn’t over the course of the sprint. The insights are carried over into the next sprint to help all team members keep improving.

Wow! 🤯 That was a whirlwind explanation of Scrum. If you want to understand the process in more detail, we cover Scrum in a number of other guides, including the difference between Kanban and Scrum and guides to Scrum sprint planning and Scrum retrospectives.

Kanban

The Kanban framework is a visual process that helps teams manage the amount of work in progress. It allows teams and team leaders to see an at-a-glance view of what’s currently in progress and what’s on the horizon.

A Kanban board has three sections: to-do, doing, and done. Tasks flow throughout these sections one at a time to ensure no one is taking on more than one task at once. This ensures focus is always put on work in progress, no one gets bogged down with too many tasks, and potential bottlenecks are discovered before they impede productivity.

Chances are you’ve seen a Kanban board in action in some form or another. Trello is an example of an interactive Kanban board. The Kanban framework can be used on its own or paired with other frameworks, such as Scrum.

Lean

The lean methodology focuses on eliminating waste to improve efficiency. Lean follows five main principles: identify value, map the value stream, create flow, establish a pull system, and seek perfection.

Lean aims to waste less time by ensuring processes, communication, and the transfer of products or services run smoothly. When waste is eliminated and time is optimized, businesses can reduce costs. Efficiency is paired with a continuous improvement mindset, which helps teams work better together and deliver ever-improving products and services.

➡️ Learn more: Understanding Lean Agile and the 5 Lean Principles.

These are only a few popular agile methodologies. To learn more, read our article on 8 Software Development Methodologies Explained.

Seamless agile implementation

Agile implementation works best when people at all levels of the organization buy into the agile transformation. A top-down approach means the leadership is on board, but it forces employees to adopt a new way of working, and they may not be comfortable with the change. When it’s the other way around, employees, team members, and team leaders will struggle to implement agile without the support from those in charge and the people who allocate resources. A hybrid approach is often ideal, where as many people as possible are excited about and invested in the transition.

With the right tools, agile implementation becomes even easier. Easy Agile is dedicated to helping teams work better with agile. We design products that highlight the customer journey and allow teams to collaborate with each other seamlessly.

Easy Agile Programs is simple to use, collaborative, flexible, and it integrates directly with Jira. You can contact our team at any time to learn more about our suite of Jira products!

Join a demo

Try Free for 30 days

Backlog prioritization is a never-ending task for product owners and product managers. As priorities evolve in response to changing business needs, or even as work is completed, or adjustments to team resourcing are made, it's important to maintain focus on the work that will deliver the most value by keeping your backlog in good shape. Agile estimation techniques can make prioritizing your backlog faster and easier.

So, let's take a look at some specific methods to prioritize your backlog and see how agile estimation can help deliver the most value to your end-users and stakeholders.

5 ways to prioritize a backlog

Of course, there are more than five ways to prioritize work items in a backlog. But, we've picked a few of our favorites that, when combined with an agile estimation process, help keep our product backlog prioritized so we can breeze through sprint planning.

1. Weighted Shortest Job First

Wow, is that a mouthful! Let's use the "WSJF" acronym to refer to this SAFe technique. Not as intimidating as it sounds, WSJF is a simple formula that assigns a business value to product backlog items.

WSJF = Cost of Delay ÷ Job Duration

Cost of Delay is the sum of three relative metrics:

• User/Business Value: the relative importance of the work item.
• Time Criticality: the decline of user/business value over time.
• Risk Reduction: the reduction of business or technical risk.

To determine the relative size for Cost of Delay, think of the lowest business value, the smallest decline in value over time, and the least risk reduction as a 1 value. The same as with Fibonacci sequence story point estimation, adjust that score appropriately when comparing work items to score them relative to one another.

The Job Duration is also expressed in relative terms. If you estimate your work items using relative estimation with story points, the story point value equals the Job Duration.

If you're using this technique to prioritize a large amount of work in a backlog where some items have only been t-shirt sized, convert your t-shirt sizes to standard Fibonacci numbers and use that value.

Warning: Be careful with converting t-shirt sizes to story points. You'll need a way to flag the t-shirt size work items that you converted to story points. You and your Scrum Master need to recognize those as t-shirt level estimations rather than the real story point estimates that come with fully refined work items.

See more at a glance in Easy Agile TeamRhythm, to make prioritizing your backlog faster

💡Tip: Add up to three extra fields on issue cards

SEE HOW

2. MoSCoW

Must-have, should-have, could-have, and won't-have are the buckets used to prioritize a backlog with the MoSCoW technique. The product team defines these designations based on the product's unique features and competitive offerings.

Each work item falls into one of those categories. The easiest part of this process is sending Won't-have items directly to the trash and getting them out of your way. Next, prioritize must-haves first and then should-haves. The could-have items naturally fall to the bottom of the backlog.

Take these items through your regular refinement meetings with your team members, and assign each item a t-shirt size or story point value. You're then ready to add the right amount of work items to your sprints or releases based on your teams' velocity or the number of story points they expect to finish during a sprint.

3. Kano

The Kano model of prioritization uses five classifications:

• Must-be: the basic functionality that your users expect.
• Attractive: a pleasant surprise for your users, but no one is going to be upset if it's not there.
• One-Dimensional: work items that make your users happy and will disappoint them if they aren't part of your product.
• Indifferent: work items that are unimportant to your customers. Often, these work items represent technical debt or enhancements that help the software development team develop more efficiently or work in the latest versions of their tech stack — but your customers really don't care about them.
• Reverse: the process of undoing a previous feature or update. If you've ever built a feature or made a UI update that your users hated, you understand reverse work items. Oops. Unfortunately, sometimes these are necessary evils, especially when it comes to security features or transitioning users to a new product after retiring a legacy product.

Like the MoSCoW method, you'll estimate these work items during refinement and then add them to your iteration or release plan. But, different from MoSCoW, you may want to balance out your sprints and releases with work items from each classification.

4. Stack Ranking

The most brutal of all prioritization techniques, stack ranking forces teams to have a linear rank of work items, which means there is only one top priority, one second priority, one third priority, and so on. Brutal!

Once you get used to it, stack ranking is a useful way to force product managers to make tough choices between work items. Even if two work items can be completed during the same sprint, it's up to the PO to determine which one gets done first, and then that choice is reflected in the sprint backlog.

Often, this job becomes easier when it's put in dire terms. For instance, if you only had one day to attract new users to your product, what work would you want in production? BOOM! There's your top priority.

The nice thing with stack ranking is that it allows POs to slide smaller work items into current sprints when other higher-priority work is too large. Adding the larger work item over-commits the team based on their velocity. Those small work items serve to fill up sprints so teams can maintain velocity and be as productive as possible. So, just because a two-story point work item is two-thirds the way down the backlog doesn't mean it will never get done.

5. Story Mapping

Story mapping helps you visualize the customer's journey through your product from start to finish. (Yep, we stole that straight from our other excellent article on story mapping.) For advanced story mappers, take what you’ve learned about story mapping, and think about how you can add MoSCoW or Kano techniques to your story maps.

Perhaps your epic backbone at the top of the user story map could represent the buckets in the MoSCoW method?

If you're like us, your story mapping sessions are productive brainstorming activities, and you'll leave the sessions with way more work than you can accomplish. By applying MoSCoW or Kano principles to the stories in your user journeys, you’ll discover the most important stories to prioritize and the stories that can wait for a later release.

Building agile estimation into backlog prioritization

We've given you five different techniques to corral your work items into an organized, prioritized, value-delivering product backlog:

1. Weighted Shortest Job First
2. MoSCoW
3. KANO
4. Stack Ranking
5. Story Maps

We've also shown you ways to incorporate agile estimates like t-shirt sizes and story points into your prioritization process to keep your team delivering the most important work while maintaining velocity and dazzling your customers and stakeholders.

We encourage you to take these ideas, share them with your team, and give them a try. If you need help using the Story Map concept, try Easy Agile TeamRhythm. However your team prioritizes its product backlog, remember to put the most important work first and then adjust those priorities as needed. Keep it easy and keep it agile!

You're part of an agile team. You know the drill. You have an agile mindset, you and your team members participate in the agile ceremonies, and you use agile tools like Jira. All good! But there's also a good chance that you're part of a larger organization that either doesn't fully grasp agile practices or needs an agile transformation itself. That's where an agile coach can step in.

Let's face it — if your organization was perfectly aligned in its agile framework, you wouldn't be reading this post. 😉 In many large organizations, the adoption of agile practices is limited to a subset of teams, most notably the software development and project management teams.

But you want more — you want to be a master in agile ways. An old saying goes something like, "the best way to learn something is to teach it." Or, as Yoda put it, "Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.”

In this post, we'll explain what's at the core of being an effective agile coach, the differences between an agile coach at the team level vs. the organization level, and a sample path to becoming a certified agile coach. We'll also provide you with some of our best educational resources to keep you sharp no matter what stage of your agile journey you're in.

What is an agile coach?

Let's get one thing out of the way. An agile coach is not an instructor with cat-like reflexes.

Our agile coach provides professional coaching and know-how by helping organizations understand the agile methodology and its benefits well enough to implement it at scale across cross-functional teams. This is provided in two buckets:

• Working with a subset of an organization (teams, managers, and stakeholders) on agile best practices to improve performance and outcomes
• Facilitating organizational change by working with leadership to remove barriers that allow for a full agile transformation

An agile coaching role is not a one-size-fits-all. It can be a permanent or temporary position at a company. Agile coaches come from a variety of backgrounds, including software developer, product owner, Scrum master, and project manager.

An agile coach is a facilitator. Because it is a mentoring role, an agile coach should have competencies in collaboration and communication.

So, you want to be an agile coach

You're all in. You want to expand your agile expertise by teaching its principles or teach agile methods outside of your team. Well, where do you get started? Here's the plan.

Let's tackle it with a three-pronged approach:

1. Learning the agile frameworks
2. Getting involved in an agile community
3. Formal agile training

Learning the agile frameworks

Typically, you want some experience working in agile frameworks before embarking on formal agile coaching certifications. That said, it can be difficult to master the multitude of frameworks within agile development, even over the course of a lengthy career. To whit:

• Scrum
• Kanban
• ScrumBan
• DevOps
• Digital Agile (DA)
• eXtreme Programming (XP)
• Praxis
• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
• Large—Scale Scrum (LeSS)

But wait...there's more! We'll run out of ink if we list them all, so let's move on. ✍️

Many of us spend the majority of our time working with one or two frameworks, or a hybrid of them. For example, you can work for a long time in a Scrum environment before mastering all of the following:

• Scrum roles
• Scrum artifacts
• Scrum ceremonies

And that's ok! We suggest mastering what you can in your own work environment, like Scrum, then learning as much as you can about another one or two that may interest you that you may not have the opportunity to practice directly. For example, learning about SAFe or LeSS and how they empower agile practices at scale would be a great place to start.

One key tip to keep in mind — it's easy to lose sight of the core principles of agile if you become too mired in practicing frameworks on a day-to-day basis. Every once in a while, close your eyes and go back and read the agile manifesto (ok, you actually need to open your eyes, but you know what we're suggesting):

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

You can open your eyes now.

If you're already working within a framework like Scrum with a development team as a Scrum master or product owner, then you probably have a lot of the prerequisites needed to get started in agile coach training courses.

Getting involved in an agile community

Before you apply for an agile coaching certification, it's a good idea to be involved in an agile community. This accomplishes three things:

1. It keeps you up-to-date on current happenings in the agile world.
2. It exposes you to agile methodologies and ideas that peers are practicing outside in their own organizations.
3. It demonstrates that you're committed to practicing agile as a career pursuit — which we'll soon see is important in the application process for becoming a certified agile coach.

You can find agile communities locally or remotely.

Formal agile training

If you want to get hired as an agile coach, it's a good idea to pursue some agile certifications. The most recognizable training courses are offered by the Scrum Alliance. There are two tracks you can take to becoming a Certified Agile Coach, depending on your interest — Certified Team Coach (CTC) or Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC). The are differences between these two tracks that are important to understand:

• A CTC works with multiple agile teams, coaching Scrum masters, product owners, and company managers. A CTC generally sticks to mentoring one area of an organization, such as software development.
• A CEC typically coaches at the executive leadership level at an organization. A CEC is an enterprise agile coach whose goal is to assist an organization in successfully achieving a full agile transformation.

You're probably wondering...how much of a commitment is it to achieve certification? We won't sugarcoat it — it's significant. But that commitment can lead to a career-long ability to have a meaningful impact on teams and organizations. In short, here’s what you need to become a CTC or CEC:

• Be an active Certified Scrum Professional
• Submit a first application describing your agile experience, including team and organization coaching experience, agile community participation, and your use of agile practices
• Submit a second application that evaluates your knowledge, mindset, and approach as a coach and that requires mentor and customer recommendations
• An annual certification fee
• Continuing education requirements to maintain your certification

Great agile coaches keep learning

It can take a long time to build the experience to become an agile coach. After that, it's important to stay in tune with core agile concepts and how they relate to current trends in software development in order to remain knowledgeable enough to maintain your credentials.

We believe our agile resources are as good for continuing education as you can find. Here are some posts that highlight some of the key areas we talked about earlier:

• What's the Difference Between Kanban vs. Scrum?
• Learn Agile First — Then Learn How to Scale It
• Why large enterprises need Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), not team—level Agile

But wait...there's more! Head over to our blog for our treasure trove of resources — and when you get tired of reading, put on your headphones and tune in to our podcast episode featuring an agile coach.