professional Scrum Archives

04 Dec 2020

Scrum Guide 2020 updates (compared to 2017)

2020 Scrum Guide is out and we thought of sharing some insights with you so you are aware of the changes. Scrum and it’s essence is the same and that means the core elements of the framework are still relevant. Here are a few things for you to remember –

Highlights of changes –

Less prescriptive
Introduction of Product Goal
One Team (no sub-teams) and One Product focus
Simplification of language (IT references removed) for wider audience

Prescriptions Removed –

Few prescriptions are removed. It doesn’t mean that those details are not relevant anymore. If your teams find these valuable, continuing with them is a good idea. However, if you want to experiment with different alternatives, give it a try.

Events:

Optional “three questions” for Daily Scrum removed
Sprint Retrospective commitments are no longer required in Sprint Backlog
Typical 10% capacity needed for Product Backlog Refinement (not a formal event) removed
Prescriptive elements about the events are condensed or removed (activities mentioned in 2017 guide are still valid, but teams can take up alternative approaches toward achieving the purpose)
Optional meeting after Daily Scrum for in-depth discussion

Artifacts:

Attributes of Product Backlog Items (Description, Order and Size) are optional
Monitoring progress towards the goals section
Product Owner decides when to release Increment

Product Goal –

It describes a future state of the product which can serve as a target for the Scrum Team to plan against. The long-term objective for the Scrum Team. They must fulfill (or abandon) one objective before taking on the next. Read more.

Artifacts Commitment –

Each artifact contains a commitment to ensure it provides information that enhances transparency and focus against which progress can be measured. These commitments exist to reinforce empiricism. Read more.

Artifact		Commitment
Product Backlog		Product Goal
Sprint Backlog		Sprint Goal
Increment		Definition of Done

Updates –

Development Team to Developers: There is no separate (Development) Team within the Scrum Team, thereby promoting ONE Scrum Team focused on the same objective.

From Roles to Accountabilities: This change has been introduced to stress on the accountabilities and not job titles. Scrum Team consists of three different sets of accountabilities – Product Owner, Developers and Scrum Master.

From Self-organize to Self-manage: “Scrum Team is self-managing, meaning they internally decide who does what, when, and how.” This change in term is a way of calling out that more empowered your Scrum Team is, the better their chances of success. Read more.

Introducing “Why” in Sprint Planning: Along with “What and “How”, Scrum Team discuss “Why is this Sprint valuable?” This provides the answer to decide the Sprint Goal. In essence, we would recommend starting your Sprint Planning with Why. Read more.

Other changes –

Suggested Scrum Team size of 10 or fewer people
Multiple increments can be created within a Sprint
Along with Empiricism, addition of “Lean Thinking” as a foundation of Scrum framework
Replacement of term “estimate” with “size”
The entire Scrum Team is accountable for creating a valuable, useful Increment every Sprint

03 May 2018

How to prepare and pass the PSM I Assessment

We, at Practice Agile frequently get this question from budding Scrum Masters, “How can we pass the PSM I assessment?” This made it imperative to jot down this blog based on the inputs we received from our students who cleared the PSM I assessment in first attempt. Hence this is tried and tested by people with diverse background and experiences.

Preparation –

Read the Scrum Guide and understand 11 core elements of Scrum
Read this excellent book “Scrum Insights for Practitioners” by Professional Scrum Trainer® Hiren Doshi as it has a lot of case studies based on practical experiences.
Clear the Scrum.org Scrum Open assessment with 100%at least once.

Attending a PSM workshop is optional to write your assessment. In most likelihood, by following the above 3 steps you will clear your PSM I assessment. However, attending the PSM workshop is highly recommended as it provides with much needed depth of knowledge to not just clear the PSM I assessment, but it also prepares you for intermediate PSM II and expert level PSM III assessments. In addition, we have enough data to make a claim that PSM workshop has prepared our students to face tough Scrum Master interviews and have also given them enough confidence to practice Scrum at their workplace. Also by attending it, you get 2 free attempts towards the PSM I assessment and significant discount for PSM II and PSM III assessments.

During Assessment –

Ensure you have reliable and good internet connection
Stay in a quiet area (undisturbed for 75 minutes)
Assessment is for 60 minutes with 80 objective type questions. You need at least 68 answers correct to meet the minimum passing percent of 85%.
Since this is a race against time, do not spend too much time on tricky questions as you will get conscious about the time during the assessment. If unsure about the answer, select the best option you can think of and bookmark the question to revisit later.
Do not bookmark too many questions (if possible), as you may not get sufficient time to go through all of them.
At the end of the assessment time-box, the answers will automatically be locked in, hence it is important to ensure you have selected the answers from your end in case you do not get time to review the questions again.

21 Mar 2018

Agile Coach Toolkit #3: Asking Powerful Questions

As an Agile Coach, you frequently encounter situations which demand quick thinking to get things moving in the right direction. Over time I have found few techniques which come out handy and always keep these in my playbook in case need arise. This is the third part in the series of tools that I have found useful in my role as Agile Coach – Asking Powerful Questions.

Purpose – As a Scrum Master, you will deal with different personas in the Scrum Team with clear goal to build a high performing team. Dealing with human psychology is complex at best (though I feel that it is chaotic at times). At times you are pulled into situations where there are conflicts among the team members and you may need to coach them to ensure it is constructive and doesn’t go down into war zone.

Description – Coaching is a guided discussion meant to sort out conversations, set goals or learn new behaviors. Start your coaching conversation by welcoming the participant and asking the person what he/ she would like to get out of the discussion. This will help set the objectives for the discussion and serve as a guardrail for channeling the conversation. This stage should not take more than 10% of the time.

Let the participant open up and talk about his/ her concerns. To get the person open up more, you may need to ask open ended question like –

“Tell me more about it?” or “What else?”

In order to gauge if the person has tried solving the issue by himself/ herself, you may ask below question –

“What have you tried and how has that worked out?”

Sometimes I find it helpful to ask below question to understand the person’s emotional state by asking –

“How does that make you feel?”

In addition to helping the person express his/ her feelings, it also provides us with good insight into how emotional aspects play into the issue. One of the useful follow up questions I find helpful is –

“If you were to give a suggestion to friend who in this scenario, what would it be?”

This helps the person to take a step back and analyze the problem from third party perspective. Sometimes, even a short question like below also help explore few options

“What is possible?”

Unless that person has not come up with options and you want to give any suggestion, first ask the person –

“May I offer you a suggestion?”

Then add your thoughts by stating –

“Have you explored … <option>?”

After the conversation has run its course, you would like to wrap up by asking the participant to summarize the take aways and next steps to ensure there will be a fruitful follow up. This should ideally be no more than 10% of the entire conversation.

Have you used this technique in coaching your team? If yes, please share your story.

References –

http://www.coachingagileteams.com/2008/04/15/agile/powerful-questions-for-agile-teams/ – Lyssa Adkins

06 May 2016

15 things a Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) actually does

The Product Owners – Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos

The Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) is an Entrepreneur – a value Maximizer & Optimizer
The PSPO sets a solid vision to help the Scrum Team keep laser sharped focus and direction that helps with incremental progress at the end of each sprint
1 Product == 1 Product Backlog == 1 Product Owner. Having one PSPO for the product helps with the clarity & focus, ensures quick decision making, and single person accountability for the success of the product.
To validate the idea the PSPO frequently releases the increment of software to market to gain real customer insights
The PSPO has the final say on the order of the Product Backlog. The PSPO orders the PBIs in the product backlog by keeping the Value of the PBI, the dependencies between PBIs and the dependencies on the other products in mind.
The PSPO ensures that most valuable functionality is generated all times by the Development Team.
The PSPO accounts for the Return on Investment and Total Cost of Ownership before a feature is built.
The PSPO ensures that all work done by the Development Team originate from the single Product Backlog – a single source of truth.
To determine the value of the product being delivered the PSPO might use metrics like time to market (cycle time / lead time), percentage of the functionality in the released product used by the customers & the overall customer satisfaction
The PSPO is accountable for Interacting and engaging with the Stakeholders.
The PSPO comes to the Sprint planning with a clear business objective in mind and works with the Development Team to craft a sprint goal based upon the forecast
During the actual Sprint the PSPO is accountable for the Product Backlog Refinement, but may delegate the work to the Development Team.
The PSPO is the only one who can abnormally terminate the Sprint in case the Sprint goal becomes obsolete.
The PSPO Is just one person and not a committee
The PSPO builds trust by closely working with Development Teams. He is not hesitant to delegate the work of writing user stories / Product Backlog items to the Development Team.

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