The Mountain Goat Software Blog

It can be very tempting to schedule a week without any meetings. But there are better ideas.

Team members often think estimates are only useful for stakeholders and managers. Here’s how they can help the team itself.

Talking about problems after they occur is too late. A pre-mortem can help a team avoid problems.

An agile team should provide visibility into its work. But not all work should be equally transparent.

Agile teams stress the importance of focusing on achieving outcomes rather than producing outputs. That’s fine, but not all the time.

We say agile teams are self-organizing. Does that mean they have the right to vote someone off?

Time pressure improves productivity & quality…up to a point. Learn how short iterations and accurate estimates create optimal conditions for agile development.

Boring retrospectives or ones in which people are afraid to speak the truth are just two of the most common problems with retrospectives.

Establishing a common baseline allows multiple teams to estimate consistently with story points.

Refactoring can be hard for product owners to prioritize because the benefit is often invisible to…

One of the benefits of being on a team is the friendships you can make with your teammates. Many of my closest friends and most important relationships are with former teammates. Some of these friendships have lasted twenty or more years since we last worked together.

New Scrum Masters face a common conundrum: How do you become a Scrum Master with no experience? Here are seven tips to help you land that first position.