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Scrum basics

Notes about a course

Intro

Scrum is a lightweight framework that helps people, teams and organization generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems. The Scrum framework is purposefully incomplete, only defining the parts required to implement Scrum theory. While implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum.

Courses:

Principles

They’re non-negotiable.

Empirical Process Control

  • Learn as we go
  • Wait and accept change
  • Inspect and adapt using short development cycles
  • Estimates are indicative only and may not be accurate

The Scrum Team must always analyze what they are doing, be transparent to each other and be able to adapt to changes.

Self-organization

Each individual must be highly independent and able to follow the methodology with low guidance. This also means they need to trust each other’s capabilities of self-organization.

Collaboration

The resulting product is a equally shared effort, every one is responsible for the team success, there are no favorites.

Value-oriented prioritization

The Scrum Team main goal is always to maximize the product value during the whole project.

Time-boxing

Each process and ceremony have a well defined duration and time to occur.

Iterative Development

The product has its value regularly incremented in cycles called Sprint.

Values

THe golden rule is: always deliver an increment at each Sprint. To do that, you will need 5 values.

Courage

A Scrum Team needs to be courageous to do the right thing, to do hard tasks and to resolve hard technical and interpersonal problems.

Focus

The team has to focus on the current Sprint and on the Scrum maintenance. That is nothing else to do inside a Sprint. Sprints can take from 2 to 6 weeks.

Commitment

The team personally commit to the Sprint objectives. Never promise what you can’t deliver.

Respect

The people in the team respects each other both professionally and personally, even if they are Python programmers. The team can only succeed if everyone believes on each other capabilities and independency. No toxicity is allowed.

Openness

The Scrum team and the stakeholder needs to agree to never change the current running Sprint backlog, but this doesn’t mean this will never happen. A well structured Scrum team will be capable of dealing with the minor changes (since it don’t happens frequently).

Artifacts

Product Backlog

  • Every undeveloped demand pointed by the Product Owner
  • The single source of demands
  • Demands here will be pushed to Sprint Backlog at the Spring Planning

Sprint Backlog

  • The undeveloped demands of a specific Sprint
  • Populated on the Sprint Planning
  • Emptied on the Sprint course

Increment

  • The result of the Sprint
  • Equals to the old product added by a valuable increment
  • The amount of increment is planned in the Sprint Planning
  • An Increment is a concrete stepping stone toward the Product Goal
  • Each Increment is additive to all prior Increments and thoroughly verified, ensuring that all Increments work together
  • In order to provide value, the Increment must be usable
  • Multiple Increments may be created within a Sprint
  • The sum of the Increments is presented at the Sprint Review thus supporting empiricism
  • However, an Increment may be delivered to stakeholders prior to the end of the Sprint
  • The Sprint Review should never be considered a gate to releasing value
  • Work cannot be considered part of an Increment unless it meets the Definition of Done

Roles

Scrum Master

  • Know all about the Scrum framework (thus, Scrum master)
  • Guide those that don’t know how to Scrum
  • Manage the processes and tools the team uses
  • Lead the Scrum events
  • Facilitates the team members jobs
  • Encourage the each team member to be independent
  • Resolve blocks to the delivery
  • Adapt the Scrum Framework to the project’s reality

Product Owner

  • Listen to the stakeholders’ needs
  • Translates the business objectives to demands
  • Populate the Backlog with demands
  • Give specifications to developers
  • Responsible for the final product

Developers

  • Translates demands to a final product

Ceremonies

Every ceremony occurs inside a Sprint, there is nothing outside nor between Sprints. When a Sprint ends, other immediately begins.

Sprint Planning

  • Happens every start of Sprint, right after the retrospective
  • Is usually when the team estimates each task effort
  • Define how to increment the product’s value

Roles:

  • Product Owner: Influenced by the stakeholders, he/she brings the business objectives and, thus, the team objectives ordered by priority.
  • Scrum Master: Conducts the reunion. Facilitates the communication between the members. Plans how the team will be able to reach the objectives.
  • Developers: Pushes to the Sprint Backlog the right tasks to reach the current goal. Plans how they will be able to reach the objectives.

Artifacts:

  • Sprint Backlog

Daily Scrum

  • Happens daily
  • Must be quick
  • Guests outside the Scrum team shouldn’t participate
  • Developers sync-up what they are doing
  • Scrum Master and Product Owner are optional members

Roles:

  • Developers: Each one give their own report to others developers and talk about blockers and risks, if any.

Sprint Review

  • Happens at the end of the Sprint
  • Presentation of the increment delivered at the current Sprint
  • It is presented by the Scrum team to the stakeholders

Roles:

  • Scrum Master: Conducts the event. Guarantees that the ceremony occurs at the correct time and with the right duration.
  • Product Owner: Observes the stakeholders and collects feedbacks as the presentation is happening.
  • Developers: Presents the increment to the stakeholders, while interacting with them.
  • Stakeholders: Watch the presentation and give feedbacks.

Artifacts:

  • If the stakeholders approves, the incremented product is delivered to the final users.

Sprint Retrospective

  • Happens after the Sprint Review
  • Team gather to reflect about the current Sprint, the people, the processes and tools used
  • Time to suggest changes in the Scrum implementation aiming to improve the next Sprint
  • Celebration time, after all you delivered value
  • When this ceremony ends, a new Sprint starts

Roles:

  • Scrum Master: Conducts the ceremony applying some interpersonal dynamic to involve all the team. Collects and analyses what has been discussed by the team.
  • Scrum Master, Product Owner, Developers: Brings reflections on the current Sprint and the Scrum implementation. Expose team blockers, self-made errors and suggest possible fixes to improve the methodology and itself. Recognizes team partners for their amazing skills.

Artifacts:

  • Action plan to deal with the problems and improvements discussed with the team

Other practices

Refinement

  • Isn’t a Scrum official ceremony, but a good practice
  • Can be an async practice, by chat
  • Either done sync or asynchronously, shouldn’t take more than 10% of the current Sprint time

Roles:

  • Product Owner: Brings to discussion business objectives that will be relevant in a near future. Always points out blocks and risks.
  • Developers: Answer the Product Owners doubts. Based in the discussion, proposes tasks to the Backlog. Estimates each task effort.

Team size

It is recommended from 10 to 20 at each Scrum Team. For bigger projects, it’s possible to divide the people in smalls Scrum Teams.

User Stories

Usually written by the Product Owner, those are documents with the stakeholders definitions clearly stated in a way the Scrum Team easily understand. It also contains all the acceptance criteria, the minimum requirements that makes the final product acceptable by the stakeholders. User Stories can be highly complex tasks and may be sub-divided in smaller tasks.

When the team adopts the User Stories method, they are placed in the Backlog and follows the normal flow of a task.

Scrum of Scrums

In a really big project, where the people had to be divided in several Scrum Teams, there can be a person responsible to manage all the Scrum Teams applying the Scrum methodology to each Team as they as individuals. This can be done taking one representative person of each team. This person is called Chief Scrum Master.

Certifications

  • CSM, Certified Scrum Master: 2 days course, mandatorily with official Scrum Alliance members
  • PSM, Professional Scrum Master: 80 questions, 1 hour
  • PMI-ACP, Agile Certifier Practitioner: 120 questions, 3 hours
  • ASF, Agile Scrum Foundation: 40 questions, 1 hour
  • ASM, Agile Scrum Master: portfolio overview with official members of Agile Scrum Foundation
  • SFC, Scrum Fundamentals Certified: offered by SCRUMstudy, 40 questions, 1 hour
  • SDC, Scrum Developer Certified: offered by SCRUMstudy, 75 questions, 90 minutes
  • SMC, Scrum Master Certified: offered by SCRUMstudy, 100 questions, 2 hours

CertiProf

CertiProf® is a corporate member of the Agile Alliance.

  • Basic: 40 questions, 1 hour
    • SFPC, Scrum Foundation Professional Certified
  • Professional: 40 questions, 1 hour
    • SMPC, Scrum Master Professional Certificate
    • SDPC, Scrum Developer Certification
    • SPOPC, Scrum Product Owner Certification
  • Advanced: Synchronous live conversation. Based on experience and documentation.
    • SAPC, Scrum Advanced Professional Certificate
    • ST-SM, Scrum Advanced Professional Certificate