Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #6 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org

Learn Scrum Framework Using Real World Case Study! This Might Surprise You!

Before Starting The First Sprint

Alex works as the Scrum Product Owner of a new software development project. One of his first tasks is to assess and find out requirements to deliver business value his client is looking for.

He needs to make sure that his client will get the correct software to achieve tangible business results. He writes down the essential use cases and discusses them with the architects, client representatives, and other stakeholders from IT and business units.

After assembling the high-level use-cases and requirements, he writes them into the Scrum Product Backlog and initiates an estimation and prioritization session with the Scrum Team. As a result of this session, all items in the Scrum Product Backlog get an initial rough estimate and priority.

During those sessions, Anna, the Scrum Master, ensures that everyone speaks the same language. So, the Scrum Product Owner, the Scrum Team Members, and their stakeholders are aligned with the anticipated goals. So they have an adequate understanding of potentially new concepts for them, such as Use Case, Backlog, Sprint, and so on. And most importantly, the Scrum software development and delivery process is correctly applied in the store.

Now Alex, the Scrum Product Owner, begins to break down the high-level requirements into the first draft of smaller-grained user stories. With this list, he then calls for the first Sprint Planning Meeting.

Sprint 1 – Day 0

During the Sprint Planning Meeting, Alex presents the Scrum Product Backlog items from the highest priority to the lowest. The Scrum Team asks and clarifies open questions. For each item, the team discusses if they have enough 25 capacity and the required know-how to develop and deliver it. The Scrum Team needs to ensure that all required human and technical resources are in place before the start of the Sprint. They need to confirm that all prerequisites and dependencies are fulfilled, which could be critical to delivering certain software features successfully.

During Sprint Planning Meeting (What-Part), the Scrum Team commit to complete the user stories 1,2,3,6,7 and 8 until the end of the Sprint. So these user stories are now moved from the Scrum Product Backlog to the Sprint Backlog. The user stories 4 and 5 cannot be accomplished in this Sprint, as some prerequisite technical infrastructure is not yet in place.

After the What-Part of the Sprint Planning Meeting, Anna, the Scrum Master, calls the Scrum Team to drill down how the team is going to implement the committed user stories (How-Part). The emerging tasks during the How-Part of the Sprint Planning Meeting are written down on the cards, and the team store them into the Sprint Backlog. Now all members of the Scrum Team are ready to select a task to begin to work on.

Sprint 1 – Day 1

In the morning, the whole team gets together for their Daily Scrum Meeting. Everyone gives a brief and concise statement about what he or she has done so far, updates the estimates of remaining work on the cards of the Sprint Backlog. Everyone tells what he or she is planning to do today, and reveals if there are any impediments which hinder them from processing any tasks.

Today one of the Scrum Team members, Melinda, informs the Scrum Team that she has a problem with the license of the integrated software development environment she is using. Anna, the Scrum Master, checks if other team members have the same problem and confirms that she’ll take care of this impediment after the meeting. After about 15 minutes of this Daily Scrum Meeting, everyone goes back to work.

After this meeting, Anna updates the Sprint Burn down Chart to visualize the progress of work during this Sprint. Then she calls the software vendor, orders the missing license, and delivers it to Melinda.

Learn Scrum Framework Using Real World Case Study! This Might Surprise You!
Introduction to Scrum A Real World Example (Case Study ) across various Scrum Phases and Sprints

Sprint 1 – Day 2

In the morning, the whole team gets together again for their Daily Scrum Meeting. In the afternoon, a member of the Scrum Team, James, has uncertainty about the expected outcome of one of the user stories. He calls Alex, Scrum Product Owner, and they discuss this user story to ensure that James properly understands it. After Alex gets informed and confident about how to proceed with this user story, he continues working on its implementation.

Sprint 1 – Day 6

The days starts again with the Daily Scrum Meeting of the team. Anna, the Scrum Master, notices this morning that the meeting tends to take more than 15 minutes. The Scrum Team members are engaging with a discussion regarding the optimization of some database queries. Anna reminds the team that the Daily Scrum Meetings are not meant to do the work, but formally aligning the team about the work and bringing them on the same page.

After the Daily Scrum Meeting, Alex (Product Owner) informs Anna (Scrum Master) that the client brought up several new requirements that may potentially impact the ongoing Sprint and the subsequent Sprints. Anna politely reminds Alex that the Scrum Team is unable to pick up these requirements during the current Sprint as the team has already committed to the scope (user stories) of this Sprint. And yet, Anna calls a Backlog Refinement Meeting for the afternoon so that Alex can inform the team about these new requirements.

During this meeting, the group supports Alex to figure out where these user stories fit the overall development plan of the software, their initial task break-down, estimates, and priorities.

Sprint 1 – Day 10

Finally, that’s the last day of this first Sprint. Anna, the Scrum Master, invites the Scrum Team for the Sprint Review Meeting. The team has prepared a non-production server with the latest version of the shippable software increment they created.

Alex, the Scrum Product Owner, and Mr. Rich, one of the client stakeholders, sit in front of an instance of a graphical user interface of this software. They validate if the implementation meets the expectations and if the team documented details regarding the current level of application adequately.

At the end of the Sprint Review Meeting, Alex concludes:

The team delivered user stories 1,2,6 and 7 as committed and expected.
The team couldn’t finish the user story 3 on time, and they didn’t demonstrate this user story at all. So, the remaining tasks of this user story are shifted to this next Sprint.
The user story 8 did not fulfill some of its Definition of Done (DoD) criteria. This user story is moved to the next Sprint, so the team can define and complete the associated tasks to satisfy the DoD of this user story later.
Alex, the Scrum Product Owner, and Mr. Rich, the client stakeholder, shortly debrief the Scrum Team about the upcoming changes and challenges about the software requirements and the direction of the overall strategy about this software should be going. Mr. Rich thanks the Scrum Team for their efforts and commitment and leaves the room.

After the completion of the Sprint Planning Meeting, the Scrum Team sits together for the Sprint Retrospective Meeting. During this meeting, they discuss what went well during the Sprint and what could be improved, so that the likelihood of failed commitments like it happened with user stories 3 and 8 will reduce in the next Sprints. One of the hurdles identified from the Sprint Retrospective Meeting is that the team do not know enough about the overall system architecture. Anna, the Scrum Master, takes over the task of bringing a system architect on board to coach and guide the team at the beginning of the next Sprint.

Sprint 2 – Day 1

Alex, the Scrum Product Owner, keeps on adding new requirements to the Scrum Product Backlog based on his recent client meetings. Moreover, he improves the way he articulated DoD of user story 8, so the Scrum Team can better envision the expected outcome from this user story.

Alex then invites the team for the Sprint Planning Meeting for Sprint 2. The Scrum Team discuss and commit to user stories with the guidance of Anna, the Scrum Master, and subsequently, the second Sprint begins.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #5 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org

What Are The Five Key Values Of The Scrum Framework? This Might Surprise You!

We have already mentioned that the scrum framework is not only a software engineering process. It also has a robust set of underlying principles.

In fact, most of the professional business domains can apply and utilize these principles.

It’s not enough to get a scrum certification to be hugely successful with the scrum. You should possess a firm grasp for scrum values to succeed with the Scrum framework

So that you’re going to deliver a great job and fantastic software that your customers and employers love. Let me now tell you more about those principles of the scrum process.

Scrum Value #1. Courage

There are times when doing the correct thing to serve the best values and benefits for our clients are not the easiest. In such moments, scrum master, scrum product owner, and the scrum team members should remember their duty and obligation.

That’s to build the best possible products and services in their particular business and information technology domain. To be better than mediocre, a scrum team should sooner or later face difficult decisions that won’t make everyone happy in their particular ecosystem of stakeholders.

To deal with this, all members of the scrum team should remember what they learned during their scrum certification training.

They should remember to be courageous, and they should master to decide and act courageously.

Scrum Value #2. Focus

With the scrum framework, when you hear the value focus, you should be thinking about two things:

Identification of correct work: What tasks are necessary to deliver the goals of my sprint? What are essential to developing the best software products and services for my clients so that they will be pleased with my work?
Prioritization: What tasks should I be working on next?
Each moment in time, there is one critical question that the entire scrum team, including scrum master and product owner, must be answering.

This question is: “What are the most important things we should be doing at the moment to fulfil reasons of why an employer hired us in the first place?”

Scrum framework has several built-in events (rituals) to ensure the reasonable prioritization of user stories and tasks. According to the scrum process, the prioritization of user stories and their associated tasks should have a continuous priority.

So we make sure that the scrum team works on the right things in the correct order.

Some of the built-in scrum ceremonies (scrum events) to prioritize our work and adjust our focus are:

Scrum Grooming (Backlog Refinement) Meeting: Grooming Meeting solely focuses on prioritization for Product Backlog to prepare it before the upcoming Sprint Planning Meeting.
Sprint Planning Meeting: These meetings help us see the dependencies and correct order of work to deliver our user stories.
Daily Scrum Meeting: Daily Scrum (Daily Stand-Up) Meeting supports us to set the tone of an upcoming workday. We must direct our focus on where it’s most required.
Sprint Review Meeting: Sprint review meeting indirectly shows us where the emphasis of the 21 scrum team must be channeling to have more successful reviews in the future.
Sprint Retrospective Meeting: These meetings support the scrum team to prioritize what aspects of their engineering process must be first improved.
Here in this section, I covered scrum rituals only from a focus point of view. You can find a more detailed explanation about the scrum ceremonies later in this material.

Having read all these, it must be evident for you now how essential prioritization and focus for the scrum framework are.

Scrum Value #3. Commitment

Without the commitment of scrum master, scrum product owner, and the scrum team, there is no possibility to deliver outstanding results with software.

In the world of the scrum software development process, most people translate the commitment value as the agreement and confinement of goals of given sprint deliverables.

Although this entirely makes sense, that understanding is not flawless. Whenever you hear the word “commitment” within the context of scrum values; what you should remember is the word: “obsession”.

To be successful in software engineering and, in life and business, you should become obsessed with your goals. So in the context of the scrum process, you should become obsessed with creating marvelous software for your clients to solve their problems.

Why are commitment and the associated obsession with scrum goals so important? Because without the obsession with the team’s mi ssi on to bui l d and del i ver astoni shi ng software, each time the scrum team encounters a non-trivial impediment, your work will slow down and stall.

Then the scrum master and the scrum team will start creating explanations to justify and legitimize for scrum product owner why they’re unable to deliver sprint goals. Excuses should have no more room in your team if your goal is to become a better than an average scrum team.

Only with an enormously high level of dedication, it’s relatively more comfortable and fulfilling to solve the problems of our clients and help and build value for them with software.

Scrum Value #4. Respect

Regardless of their age, gender, race, belief, experience, competence, opinions, and work performance, every member of a scrum team must respect and count on each other.

This respect is not only confined within the boundary of the scrum team. Moreover, every internal or external IT and business stakeholder who interacts with the scrum team is utterly respected and welcomed by a scrum team.

Experienced team members must pay attention in order not to invalidate the willingness of the contribution from less experienced team members.

It’s particularly crucial to properly receive and answer opposite opinions that the majority of the group do not agree with.

Scrum Value #5. Openness

The scrum value “openness” is often one of the primary differentiators between an average and high-performer scrum team. It would help if you resembled the openness capability of a scrum team to the vast ability of a collection of open minded individuals.

They’re creative, innovative, intellectual, honest, direct, and humble. In the scrum software engineering and delivery process, there is no inappropriate opinion, decision, and action.

The only condition is that they must be transparent, and they should aim to contribute to the joint mission of the scrum team.

It doesn’t mean that every decision and action must necessarily accelerate the outputs of the scrum team, and they should result in substantial success stories.

Thanks to openness and courage values, the scrum software development group is not afraid of making mistakes.They see their errors and less than optimal outcomes as vital chances to meaningfully improve their overall productivity and quality of work.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #4 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org

What Is Self Organization In Scrum Framework? This Might Surprise You!

The scrum team organizes itself. Scrum team members decide in consensus about tasks they need to execute to deliver the goals of a sprint. A self-organized team doesn’t require a manager or a team leader.

Self-organization in the scrum framework is very disciplined.

Sprint Backlog, Sprint Burn down Chart, and Daily Scrum Meetings which you are going to learn more about them later in this material build the foundation of self-organization.

Organizing the work by themselves requires for the most teams a learning phase. Competent scrum masters who own scrum master certifications support their scrum teams to excel with self-organization quickly.

Self-organization also includes the ability to work together despite different opinions and possible conflicts among various scrum team members. Self-organization requires compliance and trust in joint decision-making processes.

Those decision-making process in the scrum framework includes, but not limited to, planning, estimating, implementing, reporting, and reviewing the work the scrum team is jointly responsible.

What Is Self Organization In Scrum Framework? This Might Surprise You!

Yes? Then you need to bring up a team that can self-organize its own work!

What Is Inspect And Adapt In Scrum Framework? This Might Surprise You!

Scrum Inspect and Adapt is a straightforward concept to comprehend, but the hardest to properly implement and master.

Companies have finally confirmed that none of their project managers can fully foresee the big picture of complex systems. They were unable to do reliable end-to-end planning. It was evident for them that they needed to try something different.

Together with lean manufacturing (also known as lean movement), companies needed to develop a process to empower them strategically. They needed a standard operating procedure to help them learn and fix their courses of action while they’re running their projects and even operations.

That was the birth of Toyota Improvement Kata, which we today call “Inspect and Adapt” while we talk about scrum software development and delivery framework.

According to “Scrum Inspect and Adapt”:

Step 1. Inspect: We do our best to grasp the current status of the project with our current level of know how and understanding about it.
Step 2. Adapt: We define a direction and vision about the next steps of our project and then strategize and execute our vision.
Step 3. Learn: We carefully observe, learn, and teach each other while we do so. We continuously log what works and what doesn’t work while we do our work.
Step 4. Restart: Start over from Step 1 again.
Note that those four steps described above are analog, but not limited to the following Scrum rituals (Scrum events).

Step 1. Inspect is analog to Sprint Review Meetings and Sprint Retrospective Meetings.
Step 2. Adapt is analog to Sprint Planning Meetings and Backlog Refinement Meetings.
Step 3. Learn is analog to Daily Scrum Meetings.
Step 4. Restart is analog to the closure of a sprint and the start of a new sprint.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #3 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org

What Is Agile Manifesto? This Might Surprise You!

When the IT industry talks about the Scrum framework, It’s also often we hear the term “Agile Scrum” along the same lines as “Scrum”. It led some of us in the industry to think and look for differences between the terms “Agile Scrum” and “Scrum”.

Here is good news for you. “Agile Scrum” and “Scrum” terms do both refer to the same thing. They both refer to the Scrum software engineering process. Then why do we sometimes use the word “Agile” in front “Scrum”?

It’s because the scrum framework fully embraced and embedded the Agile Manifesto (Manifesto for Agile Software Development) to its core process, principles, and underlying philosophy. That brings us to understand the agile manifesto and the values of the scrum process better before we deep-dive the technicalities of the scrum process.

Agile manifesto values:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools,
Working software over comprehensive documentation,
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation,
Responding to change over following a plan.
While the factors on the right-hand side do still possess significant values, the agile manifesto appreciates and prioritizes the factors on the lefthand side higher.

The elements favored by the agile manifesto have been carefully time-tested and chosen to:

Serve clients and stakeholders better and create value for them with software,
Enhance the profession of software engineering regardless of your role, title, and career level.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #2 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org

What Is The Scrum Framework? This Might Surprise You!

What is Scrum? Well, without making things too complicated, the Scrum framework can be defined as the following:

Scrum is an iterative software engineering process to develop and deliver software.

Although the software is the main focus of the Scrum framework, iterative and agile Scrum process can be and is already being applied outside the software industry as well.

Most people in the IT industry believe that the term “Scrum” was coined early in the 2000s as a parallel track of emerging agile software development and delivery trends. That is a piece of incorrect information!

The term “Scrum” was first used and published by Harvard Business Review in January 1986. Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka coined the term “Scrum” with their article: The New New Product Development Game. (Yes, two News) You should have a look at “The New New Product Development Game” to see how everything all about Scrum got started!

Scrum can be used in all kinds of software development projects. To develop and deliver complete software packages or only some modules of larger systems — both for products and services of internal and external clients.

The Scrum Framework is a lightweight process. It focuses on increasing the productivity of teams while reducing wastes and redundant activities.

Scrum defines some general guidelines with a few rules, roles, artifacts, and events. Nevertheless, all of these components are critical, serve for specific purposes, and they are essential for the successful use of the Scrum framework.

What Is The Scrum Framework? This Might Surprise You!

The main components of Scrum framework are:

Three Scrum Roles: The Scrum Product Owner, the Scrum Team, and the Scrum Master.
Five Scrum Events (Scrum Rituals) or Ceremonies: Scrum Grooming (Backlog Refinement) Meeting, Sprint Planning Meeting, Daily Scrum Meeting, Sprint Review Meeting, and Sprint Retrospective Meeting.
Product Backlog (Scrum Backlog) or Scrum Product Backlog: An artifact that is used to manage and prioritize all of the known requirements of a Scrum project.
Sprints: Cycles of work activities to develop shippable software product or service increments.
Sprint Backlog: An artifact to keep track of requirements committed by the Scrum teams for a given Sprint.
Self-organization and unconditional collaboration are critical elements of the Scrum framework. Scrum Teams do no longer require a project manager in a classical sense. With the Scrum framework, the Scrum Master and the Scrum Product Owner share the role and responsibilities of a typical project manager.

Nonetheless, a Scrum Master or a Scrum Product is never allowed to overrule the democratic decision-making capability of a Scrum Team. For instance, only the Scrum team members can jointly commit which ones of highly prioritized Backlog items they will deliver in a Sprint as a software increment.

Another central element with the Scrum framework is the continuous improvement that we enable with “inspect & adapt”. A Scrum Team continuously monitors, inspects, and assesses their artifacts and their use of Scrum framework to adapt and optimize them. These continuous efforts for optimization maximize quality, efficiency, client satisfaction, and therefore minimize wastes and overall project risks.

The Scrum framework understands that the requirements are likely to change and they are not entirely known, especially at the beginning of projects.

Every project has unknown unknowns. Sometimes a few, sometimes a lot. The Scrum framework helps us embrace that we can discover and deal with these unknown unknowns only while we are running our projects.

The Scrum Team first fine-tunes and granularizes the lower-level or low priority requirements before it implements them. During Scrum Grooming (Backlog Refinement) and Sprint Planning Meetings. Openness for change, continuous optimization, and learning from errors are now becoming integral elements of the whole software engineering lifecycle.

Another cornerstone of the Scrum framework is transparency and direct communication. The Scrum Product Owner works closely with the Scrum Team to identify and prioritize requirements. These requirements are written down as user stories and stored in the Scrum Product 15 Backlog. The Scrum Product Backlog consists of all tasks that need to be implemented to deliver a working software system successfully.

A Scrum Team is empowered to select the user stories with which they are confident to deliver within the 2-4 weeks of Sprints. Because the Scrum Team commits its own goals, the team members feel more engaged, and they know that their opinions are listened to. This inclusion of Scrum team members to the natural flow and planning of software projects increases the team morale and subsequently augments the team performance.

Scrum Masters possess another vital role in the Scrum Framework as they work as servant leaders for and with their Scrum Teams.

Scrum Masters are trained facilitators to ensure flawless operation of their Scrum Teams. Sometimes they are master negotiators to protect their Scrum Teams from interruptions and fictive priorities of their stakeholders. Other times they are master communicators to remove or prevent known or anticipated impediments before these impediments bring their teams to dead-end streets. To only call a few of the responsibilities of Scrum Masters. We will cover more about the duties of various Scrum roles later.

The Scrum Framework, in its pure form, is best suitable for highly independent, one team green field or brown field projects.

However, the practical common sense of Scrum professionals did not stop there. With the introduction of additional roles and addendums such as “Chief Scrum Product Owner” and “Scaled Scrum”, it can be used within different project configurations too, including multi-team and geographically distributed project setups. We will cover more about these as well.

For now stay tuned and keep on enjoying the lecture!

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