Agile Racecar: Software, Magic, and Life

Agile tool Rally has a "split" feature it recommends to handle "unfinished work" in a Scrum Sprint: Manage Unfinished Work - Split user stories ( new link ) Below are my observations on the "Split" feature in Rally (followed by a few excellent articles on Splitting User Stories):   This "split" feature in Rally has numerous problems: 1. Nothing to do with Splitting User Stories It has nothing to do with "Splitting a User Story" which is an advanced but fairly well-understood field in Agile, and a tool for Product Managers to use in one of the two scenarios: The Product Manager does it before an Iteration commences (i.e. during backlog creation or release planning) to create User Stories by business value that are right-sized, i.e. they can be comfortably implemented inside an iteration; The Product Manager does it in Iteration Planning or in the middle of an Iteration to reduce scope by removing/simplifying accept...

I just came across a very good article on achieving Agile proficiency . True Agile proficiency requires a radically different way of managing Projects, Engineering, Products, & Organizations. Agile methods sometimes get a bad rap ironically because of the huge growth in their popularity and adoption. To meet the demand, a lot of organizations hire "Agile Coaches" and "certified" practitioners who are recycled Consultants & Project Managers from the world of waterfall and PMP and have merely re-branded themselves instead of truly reinventing themselves.