Director: “We don't have a budget for a Scrum Master so Cathy is going to be both the Scrum Master and Product Owner.” On a Scrum Team, there are 3 accountabilities; The Product Owner is accountable for maximizing the value resulting from the work of the Scrum Team, the Developers are accountable for building and delivering…
Scrum Master: “Team, it looks like these 3 stories that we already started on are almost done. I'm going to add an extra 2 days to this Sprint so that we can finish them.” An important concept in Scrum is timeboxing. All events in Scrum are timeboxed, from the Sprint itself, to Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum,…
Product Owner: “Team, I'm going to miss Sprint Planning again. I’m swamped with my real job and can't make it on Wednesday.” A statement like this indicates a misunderstanding of the Product Owner role. In Scrum, the Product Owner is driving the team to successfully deliver on Sprint Goals to achieve the overall Product Goal and…
ScrumMaster: “I’ve cancelled this week’s retrospective since we have all these production issues to tackle.” This one is a slippery slope. If the site is down, then the focus should be on getting it back up as quickly as possible. However, I hear the same arguments around automated testing, good design practices, and minimizing technical debt.…
Developer: “I’m not sure when the next Sprint planning is. The ScrumMaster hasn’t scheduled it yet” Two things concern me here. First, the seemingly variability of events. Second, the reliance on the ScrumMaster. In Scrum, we work on a cadence. Once we determine the Sprint length, we mostly stick to it with a few exceptions around…
Scrum Master: “Team, the last Sprint was a colossal failure.” So when can a Sprint be considered a failure? Let us start by defining what does failure mean in this situation? Is it about the team's velocity being low? Is it the team not completing all the Product Backlog Items they took on in Sprint Planning?…
Scrum Master: “Team, tomorrow's daily Scrum has been canceled as I have a doctor appointment and I can't be there to run the meeting.” A statement like this indicates a misunderstanding of the purpose of the Daily Scrum, the role of the ScrumMaster as well as the importance of sticking to a cadence. A common misconception…
Business Analyst: "I am a BA on the Scrum team and I'm responsible for writing the user stories." This is another common statement I usually hear from business analysts. Check out the previous post on the who of product backlog refinement that clarifies the responsibility of the business analysts and the rest of the Scrum team.
Executive: “Of course we are agile, everyone is using Jira now!” A tool does not make you, your team, or organization Agile. I see many organization invest in tooling without investing in proper training and coaching. Our first Agile value is about focusing on individual and interactions over processes and tools. So, any tool we do…
Business Analyst: "I just finished refining all stories for the upcoming 8 Sprints. I marked them all as Ready." This is a common statement I usually hear from business analysts. Here we need to look at the who/when/how much of product backlog refinement. We previously discussed the who of product backlog refinement and emphasized that refinement…
Developer: “We do a code freeze 2 days before the end of the Sprint so we can start testing.” A statement like this typically means the team is not applying agile engineering practices, the team doesn’t properly break out product backlog items into small vertical slices, and the team is working in a mini-waterfall approach with…
Executive: “Isn’t Scrum just a team level thing? Why do we need to train and coach the management team?” This sentiment is a common misunderstanding. However, for Scrum to be effective, it requires a change in organizational culture and operations. Without these changes, organization end up implementing Scrum-fall, Scrum-but, or Dark Scrum. It’s where everybody is…
Development Team Member: “I’m taking a bio break. I’ll mark that down as 1 point!” This of course is an exaggeration and I truly hope no team is doing this. However, team members are doing similar things when it comes to estimating using story points, especially when velocity is being tracked by upper management. When this…
Development Manager: “Yes we are a self-organizing team. I task out all the activities and then I let the team decide which tasks they want to work on. I don’t assign any of the tasks myself.” Not assigning tasks is a good first step, however, it falls short of what is means to be a self-organizing…
Developer: “I don’t have much to do. I’m still waiting on the BAs to finish writing the user stories. They always hold us back!” A comment like this highlight siloed thinking among team members. There are only 3 roles in Scrum. A Product Owner, a ScrumMaster, and a Development Team. Note that business analyst, developer, tester,…