© 2015 Randy Bone
Understanding Scrum
Scrum: Values and Getting Value
Randy Bone
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© 2015 Randy Bone
Rules: Stop Sign❖ Stop Sign Rules:
❖ Stop
❖ Check
❖ Proceed When Safe
❖ There are exceptions to these rules.
❖ If you misjudge an exception, you might pay a price:
❖ Cause an Accident
❖ Pay a Fine
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© 2015 Randy Bone
Rules: Scrum
❖ Vast majority of time, it is best to follow Scrum’s fundamental rules.
❖ There are exceptions to the rules.
❖ If you misjudge when to make an exception, there can be consequences:
❖ You might fail where others succeed.
❖ You might appear subversive.
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Scrum: Why Should I Be Interested?
❖ Developer
❖ Team is self-organizing and continuously improving.
❖ Manager
❖ Team is more predictable.
❖ Stakeholder
❖ Participate in feedback loop.
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Scrum Relationship to Agile
❖ Agile is a Framework.
❖ Methodologies that implement the Agile Framework:
❖ Kanban
❖ Scrum
❖ Others…
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Agile Values❖ www.agilemanfesto.org
❖ 4 bullets
❖ …we have come to value:
❖ Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
❖ Working software over comprehensive documentation
❖ Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
❖ Responding to change over following a plan
❖ That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
❖ 12 Principles
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Scrum Fundamentals
❖ Roles
❖ Ceremonies (Meetings)
❖ Values
❖ We will focus on Values first, rather than last or not at all.
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Who Knows About Scrum Values?
❖ At the 2014 “Give Thanks for Scrum” event, Jeff Sutherland asked:
❖ How many people are here are Certified Scrum Masters (CSMs)?
❖ Most people raised their hands.
❖ How many people know there are Scrum Values?
❖ About half the raised their hands.
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Scrum Values
❖ Openness
❖ Courage
❖ Respect
❖ Focus
❖ Commitment
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Scrum Value: Openness
❖ Facilitates Collaboration
❖ Threatens Subversive People
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Scrum Value: Courage
❖ Express concern without recrimination.
❖ Health of organization measured by how well bad news can flow up org chart.
❖ Should not protect subversion or disloyalty.
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Scrum Value: Respect
❖ Respect for:
❖ Fellow Team Members
❖ If team members are fighting, energy is spent on fight.
❖ The Customer and Project
❖ The Company and Shareholders
❖ People who only promote themselves at the expense of the customer, team and company are displaying the opposite of Respect.
❖ These people often vehemently insist they are indispensable.
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Respect Example
❖ Meetings start and end on time.
❖ If meeting will run over, get permission to extend.
❖ If anyone cannot extend, reschedule.
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Scrum Value: Focus
❖ Team members are not distracted by context switching.
❖ Team members know where they stand.
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Scrum Value: Commitment❖ Team members are highly professional and motivated.
❖ Team members who are subversive or uncommitted are eventually asked to leave the team.
❖ Scrum is stupid, I’m not doing it.
❖ Subversion
❖ I did not know I was suppose to be working on that!
❖ Scrum values foster transparency.
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Scrum Roles
❖ Team
❖ Scrum Master
❖ Product Owner
❖ Team Member
❖ Stake Holder
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Scrum Roles:Team/Stake Holder
❖ Team does the work.
❖ Stake Holders Represent Anyone with Vested Interest:
❖ People who pay for the work.
❖ Users/Testers
❖ Executive Management
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Team: Product Owner
❖ Interface between team and Stakeholders.
❖ Maintains Product Backlog.
❖ Refines Sprint Backlog for each Sprint.
❖ Responsible for Product Profitability.
❖ All this responsibility, yet still must respect team (and not assign work).
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Team: Scrum Master
❖ Guides team through Scrum process.
❖ Teams get derailed by inexperienced Scrum Masters.
❖ Guards boundaries of the team.
❖ Teams get derailed because Scrum Master not given authority to truly guard team.
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Teams: Team Member
❖ Provides 10% of time to Product Owner for refinement of next Sprint Backlog.
❖ Pulls work at Sprint Planning Meeting.
❖ Shows accomplishments at Sprint Review Meeting.
❖ Suggests improvements at Sprint Retrospective.
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Scrum Ceremonies (Meetings)
❖ Sprint Planning Meeting
❖ Sprint Review
❖ Sprint Retrospective
❖ Daily Scrum (Standup)
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Scrum Ceremony: Sprint Planning Meeting
❖ Before meeting starts, entire team is already familiar with Sprint Backlog because they helped the Product Owner create it.
❖ Team estimates items in Sprint Backlog.
❖ Each team member pulls items from Sprint Backlog.
❖ Some items may not get pulled.
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Scrum Ceremony: Sprint Review
❖ Each Team Member Shows Accomplishments
❖ This meeting may be attended by Stake Holders.
❖ Stake Holders may not speak.
❖ If a Stake Holder has a concern, they express that to the Product Owner after the meeting.
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Scrum Ceremony: Sprint Retrospective
❖ Chance for team to review sprint and suggest improvements.
❖ Usually, only the team attends.
❖ Need extremely high trust levels for anyone else to attend.
❖ Team never discusses outside of meeting.
❖ If anyone “rats” on a problem, team trust is broken.
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Scrum Ceremony: Daily Scrum
❖ Each team member makes a statement to answer each of the following questions:
❖ What did I do yesterday for the team?
❖ What do I plan to do today for the team?
❖ What blocking issues do I have (or say “no blocking issues”).
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Daily Scrum Cont.
❖ After any team member makes the 3 statements, it is okay to say “Can I check with you after?”
❖ It is NOT okay to ask someone a question!
❖ This disrespects team by breaking rhythm of Daily Scrum.
❖ Asking a question disrespects the time of people who may not be involved in question/response.
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Daily Scrum Disasters
❖ “I do not remember what I did yesterday.”
❖ Shows lack of focus and commitment.
❖ Shows lack of respect for team and project.
❖ Makes a mockery of Scrum.
❖ This person should be asked by Scrum Master to re-examine their commitment to being prepared for this meeting.
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Daily Scrum Disasters
❖ “You know, I had an interesting problem…”
❖ This person thought the Daily Scrum was a forum for story telling.
❖ This person was eventually let go.
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Daily Scrum Disasters
❖ “I do not care about stupid rules, I’m going to get to the bottom of this now.”
❖ The Scrum Master must be empowered enforce Scrum rules.
❖ If Scrum Master is unwilling or unable to enforce the rules of Scrum, then the team is not doing Scrum.
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Daily Scrum Disasters❖ Daily Scrum lasts 45 minutes.
❖ This is a sign of many of instances of not following the Scrum.
❖ This is a sign that the Scrum Master is unwilling/unable to truly lead the team through the Scrum process.
❖ It is time to think about obtaining Scrum training and coaching.
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Product Backlog
❖ Any team member (including Product Owner and Scrum Master) can add items.
❖ Any Stake Holder can add items.
❖ There may still be items in Product Backlog when product complete.
❖ An example is a nice-to-have item that customer does not want to pay for.
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Sprint Backlog❖ Product Owner works with Customer to determine
most important items on Product Backlog.
❖ Work most important items because these are the least likely to change.
❖ Product Owner works with developers to break down epics.
❖ An epic is any backlog item that would take one developer more than half a sprint to complete.
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Ready for First Sprint Planning Meeting?
❖ If team members are ready to estimate and pull work items in Sprint Backlog, then proceed with first Sprint Planning Meeting.
❖ If team members are not ready, implement Sprint Zero.
❖ If Spring Planning Meeting starts, and people have no idea about what they are estimating, stop meeting and implement Sprint Zero.
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Sprint Zero
❖ In each Sprint, team member owe 10% of their time to Product Owner to prepare for next sprint.
❖ The time is spent refining the Sprint Backlog for each subsequent sprint.
❖ Sprint Zero is the preparation time for Sprint One.
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Sprint Planning Meeting Disasters
❖ Estimating in hours instead of story points.
❖ Humans tend to be better at comparing.
❖ Nobody knows why they are doing Planning Poker.
❖ Somebody makes the mistake of assigning Work, rather than letting the team Pull work.
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Sprint Review Meeting
❖ Stake Holders see progress.
❖ Team members are acknowledged for accomplishments.
❖ Acknowledgement is VERY important.
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Sprint Review Meeting Disasters
❖ Manager is furious that individuals are getting acknowledged for their work.
❖ Stake holders/Manager wants to check work before it can be called “done.”
❖ Stake holders do not see any progress.
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Sprint Retrospective Meeting
❖ No external people allowed (unless trust levels are extremely high).
❖ For the improvement of the team.
❖ Pick top improvement item and implement.
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Sprint Retrospective Meeting Disasters
❖ Personal Attacks
❖ Food helps mitigate this.
❖ Comparing Story Points to other teams.
❖ Allowing outsiders.
❖ Breaking trust.
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Benefits of Scrum to Team
❖ Team is self-organizing.
❖ Team is continuously improving.
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Benefits of Scrum Negated
❖ Team incurs overhead of Scrum but gets no benefit.
❖ Scrum used as an excuse to micromanage and berate.
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Team Velocity❖ Team may see slight decrease in performance first 2-3
sprints.
❖ Team should see a significant performance improvement after that.
❖ If no improvement, what’s the point of implementing an Agile methodology?
❖ This can be a red flag that the team does not understand the Scrum fundamentals.
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Developer Happiness
❖ Rules are well understood and consistently enforced.
❖ Social Acceptance
❖ Have a way to measure progress.
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How to Cheat at Scrum❖ First off, DO NOT CHEAT!
❖ You only defeat yourself in the end.
❖ People in this spot usually blame anything other than themselves.
❖ “I did not cheat - Scrum just does not work.”
❖ This is a false claim.
❖ The purpose of the following slides is to help you spot cheating!!!!!!
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Cheating at Scrum: Small Team❖ Team consists of 2-3 developers who:
❖ Already get along.
❖ Are highly skilled in all areas of the project.
❖ Good at reacting to political queues from management.
❖ May or may not take Scrum seriously.
❖ Project would have succeeded with or without Scrum, so how do you measure the impact of Scrum?
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Cheating at Scrum: Ignoring Story Points
❖ Human Beings are really bad at estimating in hours.
❖ Human Beings are really good at comparisons.
❖ Story Points facilitate estimation by comparison.
❖ Story Points are the Fibonacci Sequence:
❖ Fibonacci Sequence occurs in nature.
❖ Tee-shirt sizes are based on Fibonacci
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© 2015 Randy Bone
Cheating at Scrum: Gaming Story Points
❖ Team is told they should be increasing velocity with every subsequent Sprint.
❖ Team makes a secret pact to estimate similar-sized tasks with ever-higher story point numbers.
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Summary
❖ To successfully implement Scrum:
❖ Need all fundamentals:
❖ Values, Roles, and Ceremonies
❖ Need Management Commitment
❖ You can still get some value from implementing parts of Scrum, but you will not see the full potential of Scrum.
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Questions?
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