Devops for Growth

The Scrum Guide has been updated to make it less prescriptive, using simpler language to address a wider audience. These changes have been done to make Scrum a “lightweight framework that helps people, teams and organizations generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems”. An interview with Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland about the changes to the guide.

You may think ‘cardinal sin’ is a strong word to use to talk about Scrum Masters that start their teams with Sprint 0. I don’t think so. I believe it is appropriate for the offense. A Scrum Master…

Starting from today, I am going to start a new series on my channel which I will call the 2 minutes FAQ series.

Scrum presents you with a lot of opportunities to focus on such small, tiny improvements:

Every Daily Scrum is an infinitesimal step : to re-commit to the Sprint Goal, filter out the noise and keep the Development Team focused on the high priority work.
It's a microscopic opportunity to re-plan and collaborate on " What's the most important thing we as a Development Team need to accomplish today"?
In the Sprint Retrospective take that tiny step to slowly expand the Scrum Team's capabilities in-terms of : Definition Of Done, the engineering quality practices, limiting the work in progress, team collaboration, trust, transparency, shared accountability of work and team spirit.
In the Sprint Review, take that minuscule step to tap into the stakeholders feedback, inspect the Done functionality and raise the transparency on the release progress and focus for the upcoming Sprint.
In the Sprint Planning, take that baby step to create a meaningful Sprint Goal, that unites the Scrum Team with a singular objective. You won't get to one synergistic Sprint Goal the first time. That's okay, keep at it. Improve in the successive Sprints.
Take that minimal step to spend time collaboratively as a Scrum Team to refine, review, re-order, discuss, decompose & delete the Product Backlog items during the Sprint, in every Sprint; consistently.

Don't miss these micro steps that Scrum offers. Latch on to them firmly. Commit to those small incremental improvements. Get them done in the Sprint.

These pave the way for the solid transformations like : valuable high quality Done Increments, maximizing the value delivery, better stakeholder engagement, responding to changing demand and enabling business agility!

Now that you're done learning Scrum and/or Kanban, it's time to review a few tips that will be useful in your PSM I, PSPO I, or PSK exam.

Many have a wrong impression of what the role of a Scrum Master is. The Scrum Master isn’t the team’s manager or project manager.

The Scrum Master doesn’t determine what will be done, how it will be done and when it will be done. Instead the Scrum Master helps everyone to use Scrum effectively and increase transparency.

The Scum Master is a servant leader to help the team to understand Scrum and use it effectively. It also is the Scrum Master’s job to coach people to remove misunderstandings about the roles and responsibilities within Scrum. Furthermore the Scrum Master helps to increase artifact transparency.

Development Teams are self-organising and the Product Owner determines the order of the Product Backlog. Most of the apparent responsibilities of the Scrum Master actually belong to the Development Team and Product Owner.

If you wonder what a Scrum Master DOES do, here’s the section of the Scrum Guide discussing just that: Scrum Master responsibilities

Le Scrum Guide apporte une réponse précise à cette question fréquemment posée : Pour qu’une équipe soit suffisament réactive mais également suffisament productive, une taille d’équipe idéale se situe entre 3 et 9 membres. Le product owner et le scrum master ne sont pas comptés à moins qu’ils aient effectivement des tâches attribuées dans le backlog de sprint.

En dessous de 3 membres , il est considéré en effet que l’équipe peut rencontrer des obstacles : Manque de diversité (et donc de compétence dans certains cas) , manque d’échanges (et donc manque de recul), manque de back-up pour assurer les engagements du sprint…

Au delà de 9 membres, la coordination et la communication deviennent plus complexes et l’équipe risque de perdre en agilité. Les rituels scrum comme les daily meeting sont dans ce cas plus difficiles à “timeboxer” (ne pas dépasser 15 min au délà de 9 membres devient une gageure). Toute l’équipe Scrum doit pouvoir se focaliser sur un petit périmètre afin d’apporter le plus rapidement possible de la valeur en production.

Pour résumé, proximité, communication, transparence, focus, réactivité sont autant d’éléments constituant l’agilité d’une équipe qui seront plus facilement mis en oeuvre si elle conserve une petite taille.

reprendre la base du Scrum, celle ci étant consignée dans le Scrum Guide, disponible ici en français, et aussi ici dans beaucoup d’autres langues.

En tant que francophone, vous allez certainement, selon votre niveau d’anglais, avoir un peu de mal à intégrer tout le vocabulaire. Pour ce faire, lisez et relisez le Scrum Guide en français, puis en anglais. Le dual screen est aussi un bon exercice pour bien intégrer les notions dans les deux langues.

Voici quelques éléments de vocabulaire souvent repris dans les questions et les réponses proposées dans le QCM PSM1, histoire de vous donner un aperçu du niveau attendu :
impediment / prevent / stakeholder / improvement / accountability / increase / requirements / enhancements / trade-offs / remain / forecast / solely / throughout / useable / involved / sustain / assert / commit / scope / provide / accountable / track / struggling / occur / least / scale

The Scrum checklist is a simple tool to help you get started with Scrum, or assess your current implementation o