Scrum deep dive

“We need an Advanced Scrum training” - it has been requested for years, and I have always responded with arguments why such an extensive training doesn't make sense to be delivered, and provided a questionnaire to prepare more focused training-agenda for my employers and clients. After all, there are too many 'advanced' Agile and Scrum related topics to be covered in just a single training, e.g. product ownership and product development; Scrum team and personalities; Scrum roles, events and artifacts; the countless number of good practices, tips and tricks related to the different context and situations, etc…

It seems the first quarter of 2020 was a magical time for me, as I finally decided - 'now is the time'... and managed to prepare and conduct the so-long-waited comprehensive Scrum training, proudly naming it: "Scrum deep dive"

The vision of "Scrum Deep Dive" is to educate, inspire and guide enthusiast in mastering the application of Scrum and make the most of it in order to fully reap the benefits of being Agile, while using the Scrum framework. Every step of the training answers the questions "Why is Scrum difficult to master?... and what would help you improve?" by providing insights on how to get closer to the "awesome state" with any Scrum team.

After the training the participants are able to:

• Identify the root cause of their Scrum-related pain points
• Be prepared to lead positive change in their teams and organization
• Understand the meaning and importance of the Scrum values
• Be able to easily recognize the availability or absence of Scrum values in team members
• Do the "Big 5 personality test" with their teams in order to influence improvements
• Fight team dysfunctions and lead the team to greatness
• Experience and learn from real case studies related to Scrum teams, Scrum events, artifacts and practices
• Learn from the extensive journey of a lousy-to-great Scrum team
• Learn when being Agile and using Scrum framework is not beneficial
• Plan the steps in applying the learning in their respective teams

After conducting the training, the feedback was extremely positive, and the participants shared "Scrum deep dive" helped them to:

• Improve their knowledge of SCRUM, and were able to discuss many real situations from different perspective, reevaluate them and understanding the gain in different approaches
• Understand their team’s weaknesses and how to address them
• Learn how to improve all the aspects of the Scrum events, and how to benefit the most out of the Scrum artifacts
• Understand the importance of the culture, the mindset and how to influence them
• Learn from the different experience, mistakes and bad practices in implementing Scrum
• Support their teams on the path to “mastering Scrum” and experience all the benefits by doing so

Agile & Scrum foundations training

Last week we completed another Agile & Scrum foundations training @EPAM Bulgaria. It’s been very intense and at the same time quite pleasant to train the wonderful group of young and hungry (for knowledge) developers at the company. 

Agile and Scrum foundations is training I have been conducting for years. The goal is to fully prepare any team or team members to start doing efficient Scrum and adopt the Agile values and mindset. It covers the following topics:

Agile mindset & values

Introducing Agile thinking and mindset is the most important topic. The idea is not only to help people understand the Agile way of thinking and doing, but also to test if it fits the personality of each participant.

Basics of Scrum, benefits of Scrum and the Scrum team

We talk about Scrum from a high-level point of view, discuss why we use the framework, and what the roles in the Scrum team are. It is followed by a game of Scrum roles. 

User stories & backlog refinement
How to write good user stories and how to initially refine the backlog is covered in the session.

Agile metrics and planning poker

I teach the secrets of relative estimation and we play a game of planning poker.

Scrum events, Scrum artifacts & tools, Kanban

We dig deeper into the Scrum events, artifacts and tools, discuss the basics of Kanban and how it could help the team.

Sprint simulator

A turn-based game, simulating a sprint for the participants to experience it in fast-forward environment.

There are also sessions about XP, retrospective game, and Agile & Scrum test so everybody could check what they learned and how to implement it in their work.

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Some of the participants feedback:

What was good?

- Short sessions. Well-structured and filtered info – no waste, only value. Recap sessions with questions. Real life examples.

- Games and the practical tasks.

- It was fun, engaging and had real life examples. The games were very practical-oriented.

- Presentations delivery was interesting, not in a boring way.

- The emphasis was on games, practical tasks and teamwork to strengthen the experience.

What could be improved?

- Include more real-life examples.

- Even more games :)

- Make it longer.

Most useful?

- Games :)

- XP and Kanban knowledge.

- Practicing the Scrum events.

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In conclusion, it was intense… but it was quite a lot of fun too. What is planned next is to deliver the Agile & Scrum foundations training for business and administration to support them in their day-to-day activities. Stay tuned :)

Scrum good practices and hints #01

Recently I’ve participated in the Continental’s CDS department strategic workshop for 2016. The topic of Agile & Scrum development has been heavily discussed, and I am providing some of the points as a reminder of the good Scrum practices.

Formulate sprint goal
It is difficult to do so, when the sprint backlog is full of non-related stories. Nevertheless combining stories into epics and themes and committing to them into one sprint brings value. Not only the stakeholders have clear message what could be expected after the iteration, the team also feel focused and united under the same goal.

Prepare the review on the planning
During the sprint planning - acceptance criteria need to be present for all the user stories and it should be clearly communicated what would be demoed over the sprint review in the end. The topic is again - visibility and transparency – what could the stakeholders and the product owner expect in the end?

Grooming preparations
It is inevitable that some teammates are busy and do not have time to look at the product backlog before the grooming session. The situation has to be avoided. Everybody should come prepared and at least should have rough idea of the stories that are to be groomed.

Limit the task granularity to a maximum of 1-2 days
It is a good practice and the reminder came from the Romanian colleagues. Just putting a generic ‘development’ task and estimating it to 60 hours (10 days) doesn’t help with the transparency, right?

Write comments to the user story in JIRA regularly 
Usually the comments in the tracking system come in the end when the story is completed. This practice does not really help the product owner during the sprint when information about the progress is needed.

Exchange teammates to share good practices
This one has been discussed for quite some time. It happens that team members of one team work together with team members of other team for some days but it’s not really a regular practice. And as there are different products, it is challenging to change teams understanding new expertise has to be acquired.

Do not skip the ceremonies
The Scrum ceremonies should not be skipped. And it is not because a guru, trainer or the scrummaster say so, but because they are valuable. Skipping ceremonies indicate teams do not see the value of them and is there should be a reminded session why/how the ceremonies help all of us.

Keep the physical board updated
I am a big fan of the physical Scrum board. Although JIRA/Trello/Asana/Rally/Orange are commonly used somehow the magic disappears online and the vibe is much different when there is a physical Scrum board. Both physical and online boards should be updated daily, either in the end of each day or during the daily standup in the morning.