Sprint Cadence

Transitioning to One-Week Sprints

This article discusses the transition from two-week to one-week sprints and the importance of proper preparation. It emphasizes the need to plan in advance, anticipate potential problems, and get feedback from the team. It also highlights the benefits of shorter sprints, such as faster response time and more opportunities for continuous improvement.

The Value of Speed and Iteration

Speed of iteration is a key principle in engineering and product development. To have many iterations, speed is necessary. Splitting work into small chunks and making sure each piece delivers customer value are two strategies to help engineers work faster and more efficiently. Additionally, actively managing the product as users respond to it is important for success.

Effective Metrics for Engineering Teams

This article explores the topic of effective metrics for engineering teams. It discusses the importance of metrics in evaluating team performance, the different types of metrics that can be used, and the challenges associated with their use. The article also suggests leveraging personality tests and establishing clear role definitions to improve collaboration and provide guidance for team members. By using metrics in a fair and unbiased manner and implementing these strategies, engineering teams can enhance their performance and achieve their goals more effectively.

The Role of Testing in the Engineering Product Development Process

This article discusses how a dedicated QA team can add value to the development process. It explains how the team created a framework, wrote tests, and trained QA engineers to optimize them. This resulted in better coverage of automation, ownership of the test, and a better understanding of the technology. The collaboration between QA engineers and developers made the tests faster, less brittle, and the code more robust. The article also highlights the importance of collaboration and testing as an essential part of the process.

Launching a New Product

In order to turn a proof of concept used by a consulting team into a full product, the author had to form a team, hire new developers, and negotiate between the needs of the consultants and customers. To meet the deadline, they had to be careful about scope increases and selectively cut portions of features instead of cutting entire features. This allowed them to launch the product on time and with a high profile announcement, resulting in a big uptick of customers.

Get ready for tomorrow, without losing out on today’s battles

This article discusses the challenge of addressing unplanned activities and ensuring completion of committed deliverables. The author allocated one person every sprint cycle for unplanned activities and collected data on the quantum of unplanned activities. This data was used to form a 'call of duty' service, where a team of developers would work on unplanned tasks, stories put in the backburner, and additional tooling. The author learned that allocating a dedicated engineer every sprint cycle reduces context switching, having a dedicated developer helps with critical analysis of applications, and collecting data on unplanned activities helps quantify the work and take corrective actions.