Arlen Bankston is a lean six sigma master black belt and certified ScrumMaster trainer. In the following interview with StickyMinds editor Jonathan Vanian, Arlen discusses the rise of the Lean Startup movement, tools to capture customer feedback, and what constitutes good metrics.

How do you start with a product backlog when you’re transitioning to agile? In this article, Darin Kalashian shows us how a cross-functional team at the product owner level creates a product backlog.

As semi-scientific software professionals, we like the idea of measuring our work. In some cases, our bosses like the idea much more than we do. Yet, meaningful software development metrics are notoriously challenging to define, and many people have given up trying because metrics often...

In many organizations, management demands measurements to help assess the quality of software products and projects. Are those measurements backed by solid metrics? How do we make sure that our metrics are reliably measuring what they're supposed to? What skills do we need to do this job well? Measurement is the art and science of making reliable and significant observations. Michael Bolton describes some common problems and risks with software measurement, and what we can do to address them. Learn to think critically about numbers, what they appear to measure and how they can be distorted. Improve the quality of the information that we're gathering to understand the relationship between observation, measurement, and metrics. Evaluate your measurements by asking probing questions about their validity.