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Due to the uncertainties around COVID-19, we are temporarily pivoting to virtual classes. The classes will still be live, instructor led, learn by doing, with lots of exercises, discussions, and simulations to ensure an interactive and engaging online learning experience. This includes our foundation and advanced classes: Certified Scrum Master (CSM) Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)Certified…
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…
Agile Engineering practices are not new. They originate from extreme programming back in the late 90s. XP specifically calls out these practices as things you should be doing. And here we are 20 years later still trying to get teams to adopt them. Why is that? We do Scrum not XP People might find these practices…
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…
Let’s take a look at the top 5 Agile Engineering practices that are essential to succeeding with Scrum and overcoming the struggles team face with trying to deliver a Product Increment at the end of each and every Sprint. Test Driven Development (TDD) TDD is a development practice where we start with a very small automated…
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…
Here are the top 13 patterns to split a user story. When clarifying user stories with the team during product backlog refinement, run through the following questions: 1. Can a business person understand the user story? If not, re-write it from a business perspective. 2. Does the user story include a value statement? If not, re-write…
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…
Here are the tops 5 reasons teams struggle with delivering a Product Increment at the end of every Sprint. Lack of understanding of what a Product Increment is There is a general lack of understanding as to what a Product Increment is and how we build things iteratively and incrementally. Many teams adopt Scrum but still…