In my latest Techwell blog post, I tell the tale of our most recent estimating meeting, where the product owner brought us a user story that was written as a technical implementation. We had to get him to back up and tell us the purpose of the story, so that we could determine the appropriate […]
Read Moreestimating meetings
Using Mind Maps for Test Planning
Recently I wrote a post about how our team used a mind map to help us with theme planning. We also sometimes use mind maps to help us in planning our testing. Some people asked if I’d post an example. Here it is: We’re a financial services company, and this theme was a rewrite of […]
Read MoreEstimation Roller Coaster
I report on my team’s experiences with sizing and estimating themes and stories in an article just published on StickyMinds, Estimation Roller Coaster. I’ve had some good feedback already via Twitter. Please let me know what you think!
Read MoreMind Maps for Theme Planning
When we have a new theme coming up, we usually start a few weeks or months in advance by having one or more brainstorming meetings with our Product Owner and possibly other stakeholders. The PO often draws examples on the whiteboard as we discuss: algorithms for calculations, or diagrams for workflow. We ask questions to […]
Read More“Estimating” Meetings
We’re a Scrum team (though in reality, we’re also doing XP along with some Lean and Kanban practices and principles). So, on occasion we have Estimating Meetings. Common wisdom in the Scrum world (at least as far as I’ve been taught) is that teams should not spend a huge amount of time discussing each story […]
Read More