The prioritization of Stories is a core practice in the Scrum agile development process. In fact it is probably the single most important responsibility of the Product Owner – making sure the Product Backlog is prioritized properly to maximize business value (a.k.a ROI). However, there is a common anti-pattern that I see regularly in which the Product Owner and the Delivery Team act complicitly to establish a priority order for Stories that are being committed too within a single Sprint. The need to do this comes from a negative place and it has dramatic consequences for the Delivery Team.
Continue reading »

Great document, in slide format, that is purportedly an internal document from Netflix that defines their company culture.

There are a lot of big ideas contained within, and many are not widely accepted as the norm, so no doubt this document will spark a lot of debate. However, debate is a good thing, because at least people are thinking.