Statement: Scrum Master: “Team, I'm canceling tomorrow's Daily Scrum because I have a doctor's appointment and I can't be here to run the meeting.” Anti-pattern: The Meeting King. Problem: The Daily Scrum is not about or for the Scrum Master. It is a daily planning meeting for the Developers by the Developers. Recommendation: Ensure that the…
Agile technical coaching is about helping teams adopt agile engineering practices that are essential to succeeding with Scrum. These practices help teams and organizations realize the benefits of Scrum, like faster time to market, faster return on investment, reduced risk, improved quality, and increased adaptiveness to be able to quickly respond to changing requirements and changing…
New to Agile and Scrum? Learn the fundamentals of Scrum covering Scrum theory values, Scrum roles, Scrum events, and Scrum artifacts by watching this 14 part video series based on the Scrum Alliance® Scrum Foundations Learning Objectives that are aligned with the Scrum Guide. Watch the video series here.
What is Scrum? Scrum is a framework for developing, delivering, and sustaining complex products. It all starts with our stakeholders, customers, and users, who have an idea about a product they need and want developed. They collaborate directly with Developers to turn this idea into reality. https://youtu.be/3VvSyXaH31Y The Product Owner and Developers Developers in Scrum are…
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.
Agile engineering practices are foundational for successful Scrum implementation and ensuring your team consistently delivers a Product Increment at the end of every Sprint. In this guide, we'll walk through a practical 8-step approach to help your team adopt these essential practices and make them stick. Some steps you can facilitate yourself, while others may require…
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…
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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 teams face 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 test…
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…
Many teams struggle with breaking up or splitting a user story into smaller ones. Here are the top 13 patterns to split a user story that you can use when clarifying user stories with the team during product backlog refinement. Start by asking: 1. By Business or User Perspective Can a business stakeholder understand the user…