Devops for Growth

Step 01: Master these Subjects for the certification

PSM Questions Checklist – Scrum Iteration:

What is a Iteration?
How it start and how it finishes on Scrum?
You must know the order for each event on the iteration, its purpose and how each event complements the scrum process toward the sprint goals.

Its is good to know too the impact if some team does not execute one of the Scrum Events.
What kind of problems the team will face due to that decision?
The lack of any event generate a pool of different problems in the project. You must know it.

Scrum Events

What are the Scrum Events?
You must know all the timeboxes, inputs and outputs from each event.
Who is mandatory to be on the event and who is opcional?
You must know too the objective of each member on the events.

PSM Questions Checklist – Scrum Reports

What are the reports on Scrum?
How does the Burning Down Charts are calculated?
Why reporting is so important to be done?

PSM Questions Checklist – Managing the Product Backlog

What is the Product Backlog?
Who should knows more about the business Goals?
Who should ordenate and get the business values of each Product Backlog Item?
Is there some techniques to ordenate the Product Backlog?
What can be added on the product backlog?
Who must administrate the Product Backlog?
An item can be added or removed during an Sprint that already started?

PSM Questions Checklist – Using Scrum Artefacts

What are then?
What is the purpose of each one?
Who generate each on then?
Who should be the most interested about the Artecfact´s transparency?

PSM Questions Checklist – The Scrum Players

Who are the Scrum Players?
How they interact with each one during the sprint?
What are theirs objectives and chalenges during the Sprint?
In the real life in which positions they are on Companies?
Is there a hierarchy among the scrum players?
How is the right size (number of members) of a development team?
And why the minimium and maximum quantity of people on the Development team?
What does it means?

PSM Questions Checklist – Why use Scrum?

Can we use scrum in any kind of project?
In which kind of projects the Scrum is more suitable, and why?
Why the scrum process helps the enterprise for achieving its goals?
Why the Customer should like more the Scrum process than the Waterfall process?
Scrum can be used in any industry?

PSM Questions Checklist – The Agile Manifesto

What is the Agile Manifesto?
When it was created and why?
What are the points mentioned on it and how each one can be used on the real life?

Multitasking is a form of wasted motion. Taiichi Ohno, in his book: The Toyota Production System outlined multiple forms of waste. Multitasking is a classic form of Muda, or wasted effort. It happens when people, systems or machines switch between contexts. Context switching has been heavily researched and pretty much every study shows that it creates large amounts of waste.

Rand researchers then studied the effect of the numbers estimators can choose and found a linear sequence gave worse estimates than an exponentially increasing set of numbers. There are some recent mathematical arguments for this for those interested. The question then--if you want the statistically provable best estimate--is what exponentially increasing series to use. The Fibonacci is almost, but not quite exponential and has the advantage that it is the growth pattern seen in all organic systems. Why does the Fibonacci sequence repeat in nature? So people are very familiar with it and use it constantly in choosing sizes of clothes. For example, tee shirt sizes are Fibonacci.

Scrum Pitfalls Part II continues the conversation from Part I and dives deeper into the missteps we see Agile organizations commonly make. This episode will examine the role of leadership in Scrum and the importance of removing the right Impediments. These are some of the more common dysfunctions we see in Agile organizations. The key is recognizing and quickly addressing them.

The Scrum Inc.'s Team covers:

Dysfunctional Daily Standups and Sprint Retrospectives
Velocity not being tracked, known, or measured in Points vs. Hours
Insufficient Cross-Team Coordination
Leadership expects waterfall reporting
Leadership prefers to hide dysfunction rather than address it
Leadership not prioritizing
Leadership not supporting impediment removal

If you are trying to achieve results with a group of Scrum Masters, and also building their capabilities, our experience may provide insights for you.

These are several typical missteps that keep both new and experienced Scrum teams from reaching their full potential. This course reviews the most common pitfalls we see our clients encounter. We will discuss ways to recognize and avoid these traps in advance.

See Scrum Pitfalls II which examines Impediment removal and the role of Leadership.

“The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organising teams”, the Agile Manifesto announces. This raises a few questions: What are self-organising teams? Why do we need them? What difference do self-organising teams make? How can we support self-organisation? Could there be any way to help this special kind of teamwork to emerge?

Surprisingly, there is relatively little material on what self-organising teams are about and how to support them effectively. Organisational development consultant Sigi Kaltenecker and agile coach Peter Hundermark are writing a short book “Leading Self-Organising Teams” to be published by InfoQ later in 2014.

This is the first in a series of articles that will connect readers with the topic. Starting with “what are self-organising teams?”, we will continue in the coming weeks with “why do we need self-organising teams?” and “what is Leading Self-Organising Teams all about?”.

Solid Scrum fundamentals will increase your productivity. No matter how strong your Scrum is you can always benefit from re-assessing your basic practices.

This approach was documented in the Agile 2009 presentation titled “Shock Therapy” (available at http://www.rapidscrum.com/resources.php), coauthored by Jeff Sutherland and Bjorn Granvik.
When I join a team as their Scrum Master, I issue a few non-negotiable rules (gently if possible, firmly if necessary). These rules remain in effect until the team has met three criteria:

A minimum of 240% increase in Velocity
They have completed three consecutively successful Sprints
They have identified a good business reason to begin changing rules

The Scrum Team Overview

In the original Harvard Business Review paper that inspired the creation of Scrum, “The New New Product Development Game,” Professors Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka observed great teams were:

1. Transcendent: They have a sense of purpose beyond the ordinary. This self-realized goal allows them to move beyond the ordinary into the extraordinary. In a very real way the very decision to not be average, but to be great, changes the way they view themselves and what they’re capable of.

2. Autonomous: The teams are self-organizing and self-managing, they have the power to make their own decisions about how they do their jobs and are empowered to make those decisions stick.

3. Cross-Functional: The teams have all the skills needed to complete the project. Planning, design, production, sales, distribution. And those skills feed and reinforce each other. As one team member that designed a revolutionary new camera for Canon described it: “When all the team members are located in one large room, someone’s information becomes yours, without even trying. You then start thinking in terms of what’s best or second best for the group at large and not only where you stand.”

People sometimes struggle with the idea of transcendence. Transcendence is the spirit of the team. The first Scrum team watched a video at the beginning of each Daily Meeting of New Zealand's All Blacks rugby team. The energy from that team is palpable. They are united in purpose. The first Scrum team wanted to capture that spirit: the determination to crush any impediment; the spirit to celebrate every success; the goal of victory. That is team transcendence, whether on a sports team or delivering great products or services.

In Scrum, all requirements related to an ongoing Sprint are frozen during the Sprint. No change is introduced until the Sprint ends, unless a change i