Joel Bancroft-Connors, Author at Applied Frameworks

About Joel Bancroft-Connors

Joel Bancroft-Connors is a Principal Consultant at Applied Frameworks. His passion is to unlock and maximize the inner potential of others. He believes his roots in customer service, and its singular focus on serving the customer is where his enthusiasm for Agile comes from. In the classroom, Joel combines his passion to unlock the potential of others with decades of theater and game design experience to create engaging workshops for the participants. By leveraging his unique background, Joel can explain Scrum and Agile concepts in a way that ensures learners can immediately apply them to their professional lives. When he is not teaching, he spends time with his family in the Pacific Northwest. Read Full Bio

Expert Tips: Facilitating Large In-person Events

By Joel Bancroft-Connors|2022-07-21T14:16:35-04:00July 21st, 2022|Process|

Facilitating large in-person events can be challenging for anyone. Here are some relatively simple tips you can follow to pull off an amazing event.

Burndown Charts: 7 Tips for Effective Use

By Joel Bancroft-Connors|2022-07-07T18:09:12-04:00July 7th, 2022|Frameworks, Process|

Burndown charts can communicate a team's Sprint progress quickly and clearly. However, they aren't easy to create — or use — correctly.

How I Used the Personal Retrospective to Become a Better Scrum Trainer

By Joel Bancroft-Connors|2022-06-22T18:13:10-04:00June 22nd, 2022|Frameworks, Training|

For the last four years, I’ve been taking the steps necessary to become a Certified Scrum Trainer. It wasn’t easy. And I couldn’t have done it without making the Personal Retrospective central to the process.

How to Improve the Five Whys Technique

By Joel Bancroft-Connors|2022-05-16T08:29:42-04:00May 16th, 2022|Frameworks, Process|

In the last decade, the Five Whys technique has become standard Agile practice. The technique can lead to unintended consequences, however, so we're proposing an alternative: Five Whats.

User Story Hierarchy in Agile

By Joel Bancroft-Connors|2022-04-25T10:23:15-04:00April 25th, 2022|Frameworks, Process|

This article is intended to be a quick reference guide to align your team to a common vocabulary around User Stories and User Story Hierarchy.

Defining Value in Agile

By Joel Bancroft-Connors|2022-04-23T12:32:24-04:00April 23rd, 2022|Frameworks, Process, Profit|

In an Agile context, defining value isn’t necessarily about calculating return on investment or measuring profit margins. At the team level where work gets done, defining value must be understood incrementally, in terms that make the right decisions possible.

The Secrets of Effective Sprint Planning

By Joel Bancroft-Connors|2022-04-12T05:52:32-04:00April 12th, 2022|Frameworks, Process|

Do your Sprints appear to be successful but somehow the end result isn't what you expected? The problem may be Sprint Planning. In this article we address the most common pitfalls and propose concrete steps for improvement, plus a flexible Sprint Planning agenda.

12 Next