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The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook
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Table of Contents
The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
Acknowledgment
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
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Why Subscribe?
Free Access for Packt account holders
Instant Updates on New Packt Books
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Errata
Piracy
Questions
1. Scrum – A Brief Review of the Basics (and a Few Interesting Tidbits)
The problem
A brief history
The underlying concepts of Scrum
Complex adaptive systems
The empirical process control barstool
Scrum core values
Scrum is inherently lean
Scrum roles
Scrum team
Product owner
ScrumMaster
Brief review of the Scrum framework
Sprint planning
Daily scrum meeting
Sprint review meeting
Sprint retrospective
Release planning (optional)
Scrum artifacts
The product backlog
The sprint backlog
The product increment
Visible progress
Release backlog and burndown
Sprint burndown
Dysfunctions or true constraints?
Is your team ready for Scrum?
Summary
Recommended reading
2. Release Planning – Tuning Product Development
Start at the beginning – product backlog
Focus product backlogs on users and values
Engage the team early
Prioritization can be useful for other things
Release planning – when will you set your features free?
Timing of releases and release planning
Don't create the software big dig
Integrate early and often to mitigate risks
Make buffers visible
How to conduct a release planning event?
Do your homework!
Facilitating the release planning meeting
Participants
Agenda
The physical space
Definition of Done
Release planning output
Release planning summary
Summary
Recommended reading
3. Sprint Planning – Fine-tune the Sprint Commitment
Sprint planning basics
Preparing for sprint planning
High-octane stories
Help the product owner prepare for sprint planning
Physical space
Visualize the meeting
Scratchpad, script, and agenda
Running the sprint planning meeting
Part I – the What and the Why
Different types of stories
Part II – the How
Understanding capacity
Talk first, then identify sprint tasks
Anyone tasks, expert tasks, and pairing
Sprint buffering
It helps to see time
Team members should talk with each other
Don't over-facilitate
Sample sprint planning checklist
Commit!
Improving sprint planning
Summary
Recommended reading
4. Sprint! Visible, Collaborative, and Meaningful Work
How the Scrum team should work
Working in a sprint
Sprints shouldn't be just Sprints
Beware of the old mind-set creeping into the new paradigm
Estimating work
The misunderstood daily scrum meeting
Three questions
What did I do since yesterday's meeting?
What will I do by tomorrow's meeting?
What blocks me from being able to do my work?
Do we have to meet every day?
Who's allowed to attend the daily scrum?
Look ahead at the next sprint's product backlog items
It takes a village – communicating during the sprint
Individual influences to the work of the sprint
Factor 1 – Openness
Factor 2 – Conscientiousness
Factor 3 – Extroversion, are you an innie or an outie?
Factor 4 – Agreeableness
Factor 5 – Neuroticism
What's 'Norm'al for one team is not for another
A corporate culture and its impact on teamwork
Team assumptions about management
Corporate mind-set opposes the Agile manifesto
Fear of empowerment
Employees feel like headcount
Summary
Recommended reading
5. The End? Improving Product and Process One Bite at a Time
Sprint review – inspecting and adapting the product
Product owner acceptance
Prior to the sprint review
During the sprint review
Set the context
Give a visual
Keep your stories straight
Keep everyone focused
Does a Scrum team demo incomplete work?
See the whole
Possible outcomes of a sprint review
Don't surprise the product owner
Sprint reviews for continuous flow frameworks
Sprint review – a time for collaboration and trust
Sprint retrospective – inspecting and adapting processes and teamwork
SCRUM is not an acronym for Serious Crud Required by Upper Management
Unearthing information for improvement
Set the safety
Recall sprint events
Ask – What worked well for us? What didn't work so well for us?
Who owns the improvement?
Prioritize and assign action items
Make REAL action items
Some different retrospective techniques
Change the scenery
Visualize the future
Team cave art
Retrospective yoga/meditation
Why should we care about reviews and retrospectives?
Summary
Recommended reading
6. The Criticality of Real-time Information
Yesterday's news is old news
Getting the message
Through the Scrum microscope
1x magnification – product vision/initiatives
2x magnification – the product roadmap
4x magnification – the release plan
Release the burndown baseline
Baseline with updates
Team velocity chart
A Gantt chart in an Agile project
8x magnification – the product backlog
What does your user want?
16x magnification – the sprint
User stories in sprint planning
Acceptance criteria
Definition of Done
Sprint goals
Sprint reviews
32x magnification – tasks, daily scrums, and other information
Daily broadcasts
Daily scrums
Sprint backlogs
Sprint burndown chart
What burns down can also burn up
64x magnification – read all about it, in the team room!
Monitor this!
Scrum microscope summary
When physical taskboards and conversations aren't enough
Invite stakeholders to sprint reviews
Create and distribute reports
Waste and obstacle removal
Summary
7. Scrum Values Expose Fear, Dysfunction, and Waste
Prepare for change aches and pains
The five core values of Scrum
Scrum value #1 – Courage
Free the spark
Scrum value #2 – Commitment
Commitment exposes fear of dedicated, cross-functional Scrum teams
Expert-to-Task or ETT model of human resource allocation
Team-to-Backlog or the TTB model of human team allocation
What do we do about commitment issues?
Scrum value #3 – Openness
Secrecy and what to do about it
Openness exposes truth about capacity and demand
Openness exposes a need for slowing down in order to eventually speed up
Scrum value #4 – Focus
Lack of focus and personal control = missed commitments
Focus reveals waste
Focus reveals failure to understand small increments
Scrum value #5 – Respect
Power, position, and control and what to do about it
Summary
Recommended reading
8. Everyday Leadership for the ScrumMaster and Team
Everyday leadership
First, what kind of personality do you have?
Learn to look into your reflection
Portrait of a leader
Selfless, confident, and accountable
Open to feedback
Builds trust
Leads with Theory Y
Honest
How to become a better ScrumMaster
Empower yourself and others!
Help others visualize the desired state
Influence others
Roll up your sleeves and servant-lead
Listen more than talk
Plant seeds
Choose to be happy, focus on the positive
Know your communication style
Loud or quiet?
Direct versus passive
Switzerland or Supreme Court judge
Other ScrumMaster characteristics
Procrastinator or proactive
Teacher
Student
Scrum buddy
Journal/walk up a hill
Which ScrumMaster persona are you?
Techie Taj
Bossy Betty
Clammed Up Carl
Thundering Thea
Officer Sophie
Summary
Recommended reading
9. Shaping the Agile Organization
Will Agile cause a ripple, or a tsunami?
How does your organization measure up to the Scrum values?
What if the Scrum values score is low?
Culture change requires a multi-faceted approach
Illustrating the need for and direction of change
Pre-agility survey
Waste score
Old-fashioned interviews
The Agile organization chart and roles matrix
Traditional roles in an Agile organization
Scaling an Agile mind-set
Self-actualizing individuals create an Agile organization
Goals and metrics that motivate self-actualizing
Person has a say in it
Understanding what demotivates
Standardizing measurements
Frequent, multi-perspective feedback
CEO scorecard
Don't go it alone
Avoiding Scrum as a panacea
Why change? What blocks?
Immunity to change
Face it, Scrum might not be for your organization
Summary
Recommended reading
10. Scrum – Large and Small
Scrum stops the resource shell game
Small Scrum
Big programs, small Scrum
When Scrum gets big—dysfunction or constraint?
Challenge 1: Fearful ScrumMasters
Challenge 2: Late integration
Challenge 3: Communication across multiple teams
Challenge 4: Big picture metrics
Customer happiness
Time to Market
Quality
Employee morale
Challenge 5: Not done – the root of all evil
Challenge 6: Too few product owners
Challenge 7: Scaling too much, too fast
Challenge 8: Wrong team structure
Challenge 9: Distributed teams
A real need for a project Grand Poobah
More tips for large Scrums
Agile DNA
Summary
Recommended reading
11. Scrum and the Future
A leaner Agile Manifesto
Redefining the role of the organization
Self-managing teams – the inmates run the asylum!
Career paths
True visibility
Capacity, not projects
The CEO of Me
Customer collaboration via prioritized product backlog
Don't squeeze innovation out of the product backlog
How modern organizations make space for innovation
The creative culture
Regular product reviews or demos
We are all ScrumMasters
A. The ScrumMaster's Responsibilities
The ScrumMaster's role
Core knowledge
Responsibilities
Running the sprint
Assisting the product owner
Crea...
