We kick off this week’s link fest with sex orgies.
Jurgen Appelo’s post on how scrum uses peer pressure in a positive way can be found here.
I enjoy his writing and he uses a cool technique for creating a scrum team, by getting them to cook dinner for him. I like it ‘cos I worked as a chef for a while and having everyone working together to produce a meal for several people at the same time is a good way to teach people how to self-organise. Plus you get free food out of it 
There’s a good article by Clinton Keith here about the factors influencing your sprint length.
Mike Cohn clarified the ‘Release Backlog’ concept and why it really isn’t a good idea. He draws attention to the use of velocity as a predictor of the shipping date.
He has another good article up about story points. Many teams struggle with the move from time based estimates to story points. I think this may help clarify what story points are, given that they are a more abstract measure of effort.
Having to support the software we ship while building new functionality is probably one of the most challenging aspects of implementing scrum. Boris will tell you that the answer is not to write bugs. But if you do, how to handle the support requests while not changing the scope of the sprint or endangering the ability to deliver the commitment? Kelly Walters at ‘All About Agile’ has some good suggestions here.
If you can’t wait till next week for more links, you can also follow me on twitter. Till next week.
Carlo
