Scrum & agileAn incremental process for product development as

well as work management

Scrum

A story to kick it off

Chicken and pig A chicken and a pig were brainstorming

Chicken: Let’s start a restaurantPig: Good idea, what would we call it?Chicken: mmmmmhhhh... what about Ham ‘n Eggs?Pig: No thanks. I’d be committed, but you’d only be involved.

The real issue for a Scrum is who is committed to the project and accountable for deliverables. The committed get to talk at the daily Scrum meeting. They are the pigs and their butts are on the line. We could call them contributors, if we don’t like the pig terminology.

People who are not committed to the project and are not accaountable for deliverables at the meeting do not get to talk. They are excess overhead for the meeting. They might be called evesdroppers (lurkers) if we don’t like the chicken terminology. Whatever they are called it has to have a negative connotation because they tend to sap productivity.

Scrum

Scrum

• What (is Scrum)

• How (it works)

• Why (it does work)

A Scrum is a team pack in Rugby, everybody in the pack acts together with everyone else to move the ball down the field

Scrum

What

Scrum Scrum is all about building high performing teams able to fulfill their commitment to a set of deliverables.

Scrum is an incremental process for developing a product or managing a work. It produces “potentially” shippable sets of functionalities at the end of every iteration and can be better described by its attributes.

Scrum is:✓ an agile process to monitor and control development work✓ a wrapper for existing engineering practices✓ a team based approach to iteratively, incrementally develop

systems and products when requirements are rapidly changing

✓ a process that controls the chaos of conflicting interests and needs

✓ a way to improve communications and maximize co-operation✓ a way to detect and cause the removal of anything that gets in

the way of developing and delivering✓ a way to maximize productivity✓ scalable from single project to entire organizations.✓ a way for everyone to feel good about their job, contributions

and that they have done the very best they possibly could

Scrum

What

Scrum Roles:Scrum is a process skeleton that includes a set of practices and predefined roles.The main roles in scrum are:

✓ The Scrum Master: is responsible to deliver the expected deliverables. Know how to get things done.

✓ The Product Owner: represent stakeholders in meetings. Know what has to get done. Can prioritize.

✓ The Team: includes (but is not limited to) developers. They commit to deliver.

✓ The Stakeholders: are the sponsor of the project. They might not know what has to be done, they know (most of the times) what they need.

Scrum

What

Scrum:It is based on well defined (both in time and scope as well as actors invited) set of recurring meetings which defines the “rhythm”.

Product backlog definition and updates: the project team defines the product backlog, a list of features with (possibly) user stories and business priorities.

Sprint definition: the development team listens to the product owner and commit to deliver a set of features agreed in a unit of time (typically 2-4 weeks)

Daily scrums: a short meeting where developers answer to the next three questions:

What have you done yesterday?What are you going to do today?Do you have any impediment? If yes, list them

Sprint review: where the deliverables are commented with the product owner.

Sprint retrospective: the development team packs up in order to understand the “lesson learnt” of the previous sprint and organizes for the next

Scrum

... and how does all of that stay together?

Scrum

What

Scrum

How

Observations Scrum provides direct visibility into the progress of a project:

✓ Management can attend and observe the daily Scrum meetings➡ During these meetings they can observe team spirit, each

member’s participation, team member interaction, what is being completed and impediments to the progress.

✓ Management can attend and participate in Post Sprint meetings and Sprint planning meetings, where -based on progress to date and team capabilities (and capacity) the work is planned

✓ Scrum provides daily status on team progress, and iterative reviews of product progress.

Everything is visible:

✓ what’s to be worked on.✓ how work is progressing.✓ what has been built.

Scrum

How

Management is concerned about:

✓ Sprint progress - how is the team doing toward meeting their Sprint goal?

✓ Release progress - will the release be on time with the quality and functionality desired?

✓ Product progress - how is the product filling out compared to what's needed?

Scrum

How

Where are the answers?

✓ All those answers are in the Product and Sprint Backlogs

Scrum

Why

Commitment Scrum helps actors in the process to commit to a reasonable, reachable, meaningful deadline

Drive Scrum project members to have a strong drive and responsibility for the features they commit to deliver.

Signals Scrum broadcast immediate signals of the status of a project. Management, being actively involved in the process, could read those signals and act proactively before it’s too late.

Scrum

And that’s enough fluff

Let’s get started with some role playing

Scrum

Daily meeting

Rules

✓ It’s a quick, time-boxed, (usually) standing meeting

✓ Only “pigs” can talk

✓ There are three questions to be answered:

‣ What have you done yesterday

‣ What are you about to do today

‣ Have you any obstacle preventing you to fulfill your deliverables?

✓ Each spin-off conversation must be developed off the meeting

✓ Answers to the above mentioned questions should be as concise as

possible

✓ It is not allowed to interrupt other’s participants.

✓ Product Owner might attend but cannot speak other than answer

direct questions or to briefly talk to the team about project

specific topics.

Scrum

resources

Scrum macro process

Success story Portfolio Management

Living on the edge

Self organization