Cycle Time Archives - Igor Lakic

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Mistakes Teams Make When Changing Sprint Length—and How to Fix Them

BlogOctober 28, 2025102Views 0Likes 0Comments

Changing Sprint length sounds small. It isn’t. You’re rewiring the team’s heartbeat: planning, demo cadence, stakeholder expectations, metrics—everything. Get it right and throughput climbs with less stress. Get it wrong and you’ll drown in churn, missed goals, and noisy metrics. Below are the most common traps I see when teams tweak Sprint cadence, plus fast,…

Agile teammates review a Kanban board labeled To Do, In Progress, and Testing as a woman points to sticky notes during sprint planning.

How Long Is a Sprint in Agile? The 2025 Playbook (What Top Teams Actually Do)

BlogOctober 24, 2025178Views 0Likes 0Comments

If you’re here for a straight answer first: a Sprint is one month or less. That’s the official time-box. Most elite teams today run one or two weeks, with two weeks still the common default. The rest of this playbook shows you how to pick your length, prove it works, and when to change it—without…

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Capacity Planning That Survives Reality

BlogOctober 10, 2025141Views 0Likes 0Comments

Replace wishful thinking with arrival/throughput trends and variability. Here’s a no-theory-bloat playbook you can run this week to set a simple capacity cap and boost predictability—without spreadsheets breeding in the wild. The 20% that moves 80% of results Match intake to historical throughput. Cap WIP by target cycle time (via Little’s Law). Price variability into…

Scrum team meeting as a facilitator points to a Kanban board covered with colorful sticky notes to discuss work in progress.

Kanban for Scrum Teams: Stabilize Flow Without Changing Scrum

BlogOctober 7, 2025213Views 0Likes 0Comments

Scrum gives you focus and cadence. Kanban adds flow and predictability. Used together, you can deliver more steadily without changing Scrum’s roles, events, or artifacts. This guide shows exactly how to layer Kanban practices into your existing Scrum setup to visualize flow, limit WIP, and actively manage aging work—plus a 4-week pilot plan and clear…

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Flow Debt: The Hidden Cost of Blocked Work

BlogOctober 3, 2025156Views 0Likes 0Comments

Track blocked time %, aging WIP, and handoff counts; add blocker clustering and a weekly impediment burn-down If your delivery feels slower than it should be—even with “full” utilization—you’re likely paying flow debt: the silent tax created when work sits blocked, ages in progress, or pinballs across handoffs. You don’t need a giant transformation to…

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Forecasting Without Story Points: A Monte Carlo Playbook

BlogSeptember 11, 2025698Views 0Likes 0Comments

Build probabilistic delivery forecasts from historical throughput—plus caveats, confidence intervals, and an executive-ready chart. Most teams still try to “estimate” delivery with story points. You don’t need them. If you have a list of items finished per day/week (throughput), you can simulate thousands of futures in seconds and answer the only questions that matter: “When…

Team of five reviewing a glass board covered with colorful sticky notes, discussing WIP limits and next steps.

From Busy to Predictable: Little’s Law in Scrum Teams

BlogAugust 29, 20251KViews 0Likes 0Comments

Introduction If your team is always busy but cycle times bounce all over the place, you don’t have a motivation problem—you have a flow problem. Little’s Law in Scrum turns that chaos into math you can manage: average WIP × average time in system are tightly linked to throughput. Use that relationship to set smarter…

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5 Signals Your Product Backlog Is Failing (and How to Fix It)

BlogAugust 27, 2025512Views 0Likes 0Comments

Introduction If you’re honest, does your backlog health inspire confidence—or dread? Many teams plan with good intentions but get blindsided by stale items, half-ready stories, and a growing queue that never seems to shrink. In this guide, we’ll make backlog health concrete using four measurable signals—item age, readiness ratio, arrival vs. completion rate, and reorder…

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Sprint Goals That Drive Outcomes, Not Activity

BlogAugust 19, 2025468Views 0Likes 0Comments

Introduction Most teams “do” Sprint Goals, but many still ship activity instead of outcomes. The fix? Sprint Goals that are measurable, tied to your Product Goal, and tracked with EBM (Current Value, Time-to-Market, Ability to Innovate). In this guide, you’ll craft outcome-driven goals and visualize forecast vs. actual impact using a lightweight Jira dashboard. Why…

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Cut Your Time-to-Learn: Deliver Product Value & Insight Faster

BlogJuly 14, 2025764Views 0Likes 0Comments

Introduction Picture this: an idea pops up in a sprint planning session on Monday and is already teaching you real-world lessons by Friday. That lightning-fast feedback is what the Time-to-Learn metric is all about. When teams know Time-to-Learn (T2L) and shrink it, they out-learn slower competitors—and win. In this guide you’ll see why T2L matters,…

Tag: Cycle Time

Mistakes Teams Make When Changing Sprint Length—and How to Fix Them

How Long Is a Sprint in Agile? The 2025 Playbook (What Top Teams Actually Do)

Capacity Planning That Survives Reality

Kanban for Scrum Teams: Stabilize Flow Without Changing Scrum

Flow Debt: The Hidden Cost of Blocked Work

Forecasting Without Story Points: A Monte Carlo Playbook

From Busy to Predictable: Little’s Law in Scrum Teams

5 Signals Your Product Backlog Is Failing (and How to Fix It)

Sprint Goals That Drive Outcomes, Not Activity

Cut Your Time-to-Learn: Deliver Product Value & Insight Faster

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Tag: Cycle Time

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