Best Practice - Agile

Why are these best practices?

Best practice

If you are just getting started with Agile, begin with a simple board.

Here’s why

Starting with getting your work onto a board and pulling work items across will help you practice and give you more structure later on as you start to organize and evaluate the priority of work items

Best practice

Talk through your workflow as a team, before creating columns on the board— - but keep it simple!

Here’s why

Many times, teams create too much complexity on the board, creating extra work that doesn’t really add value. Start with just a few columns that your work goes through, and then adjust as you go.

Best practice

Do your standups using the board view.

Here’s why

It’s easy to forget which work is actually the highest priority because daily disruptions can feel more urgent. Keep an eye on your original commitments by looking at the board.

Best practice

Create an Average Velocity report (Stories moved to complete during an iteration or timebox), and use it to make your team’s planning more accurate.

Here’s why

It’s easy to be overly optimistic about how much we can get done at any one time. Looking at velocity regularly and being more realistic about our commitments helps build real predictability, and protects us from work overload

Best practice

Generate your backlog in the “Project” view—you may refer to this as an Epic, Feature, Campaign, or other. If you have multiple Projects, use the Program view and turn on group by Project. To see overall priority for your team, then turn off the grouping.

Here’s why

A backlog on a board may not represent all of the work needed to create larger value. Looking at the Project can help focus the team on the higher value you are trying to deliver to your customer. From there, you can refine and prioritize the work and pull it onto a board.