The First Agility Principle: We don’t need long planning horizons when we have a short turning radius.
The TechFar Handbook suggests that the Government should be intimately involved with the Agile process:
As part of its responsibility, the Government is involved, at a minimum, at critical decision points in each sprint cycle – at the requirements development phase and sprint cycle review, but it is preferable to have daily involvement from the Government Product Owner, and frequent involvement from end-user representatives.
Essentially, the Government should be involved in the prioritization of the backlogs, the release and sprint planning events, and at the sprint and release reviews. This is in alignment with the Agile Manifesto that states that we value, ” Working software over comprehensive documentation”; and the related principle “Working software is the primary measure of progress”.
This is the first of a series of posts I’m working on related to the big idea of Story Points, tracking project progress, judging value, and a myriad of related issues. For instance, I’m aware of three active agile government projects that each has a strong desire to use story point production (or a similar valuation) as a measure of progress and base payment on that progress per sprint or product increment (release). This isn’t to say that is good or bad, contractually right or wrong; rather, I want to explore this need of the customer to evaluate progress and value. But first, an introduction to Story Points:
The following is a SketchNote (‘SketchNote Handbook‘). Basically a graphical notes page that describes an IBC policy loan example used to make an investment. In this case, the investment is $50k for an apartment complex deal where the returns should be considerably higher than the guaranteed returns on your cash value, and considerably higher than the interest rate on your policy loan.
Ever wish you could make some fresh bread without a lot of work? I stumbled on this recipe from Instructables a couple years ago and have never been dissapointed. Check it out here:
http://www.instructables.com/id/4-Hour-No-Knead-bread/
The 4-hour No Knead Bread recipe works just as is, but I do have a few modifications that I’ve found that I like to add to the recipe.