Looking for better ways to recruit and coach individuals for successful agile teams? Last week @McKinsey and @Scrumdotorg just released a study that explores the values and traits that make agile teams successful. Read the full report here: https://www.scrum.org/resources/how-select-and-develop-individuals-successful-agile-teams-practical-guide
Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!
A nice summary of the book Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There! can be found in the presentation Working with Teams from Karolina Ozadowicz that can be found here: https://prezi.com/w0jqbiy-f582/working-with-teams/
How to introduce myself as a Scrum Master in an existing team?
Some questions you could ask yourself are:
- Does the team know Agile, the Scrum framework?
- What is the composition of the team?
- What motivates the members?
- What are the common goals of the team?
- How about the values of the team?
- Is there a history that we need to know before joining the team?
- Would you start with a kick off / retrospective where the team would explain their pains and where we could discuss
way of working?
How to get a head start with Scrum
Scrum is easy to understand, yet difficult to master. The Scrum Guide says so and it’s true. If you have worked with Scrum in your organization you probably recognize it also. It’s not difficult to start with Scrum. Jasper Alblas wrote a nice article on how to get a head start with Scrum. Read it here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-get-head-start-scrum-jasper-alblas/
Five Fundamental Questions to Assess your Agile Process
Barry Overeem writes about the five fundamental questions to assess you agile process in this article: https://medium.com/the-liberators/five-fundamental-questions-to-assess-your-agile-process-376b9230c7d8
- Value. Do we know the value we seek to deliver and are we consistently delivering the maximum value?
- Flow. Do we understand how we reach that value and are we consistently reducing the time and/or increasing the ease by which we reach it?
- Quality. Do we understand how good our product and workmanship needs to be and are we consistently and demonstrably achieving it?
- Joy. Do we know what we collectively and individually need to be joyful and are we consistently meeting those needs?
- Continuous Improvement. Do we know what we need to improve across value, flow, quality and joy and are we demonstrably pursuing those improvements?
The Scrum Master Checklist
This site is dedicated to Michael James’ Example Scrum Master Checklist, an example list of things a Scrum Master should pay attention to in a typical organization. Check it out at http://scrummasterchecklist.org/
The Evolution of the Scrum Guide— ‘10 to ‘19
The Scrum Guide has changed — are you up to date?
Read the complete article here: https://medium.com/serious-scrum/the-evolution-of-the-scrum-guide-10-to-19-f3ac4d82cfcb
7 Key Factors for Scaling Agile in Large Organizations
Agile adoption has grown from a small number of agile teams within an organization to many agile teams, larger teams, and entire organizations themselves, bringing a new set of challenges and complexities. Regardless of the framework, some important factors play a major role in making large-scale agile adoption successful. Here are seven aspects you should consider when scaling agile across an organization.
- Executive leadership support
- Knowledge acquisition
- Engineering excellence
- Tools and infrastructure
- Communities of practice
- Integrating nonsoftware teams
- Agile champions and change agents
Read the complete article here: https://www.agileconnection.com/article/7-key-factors-scaling-agile-large-organizations
How to Deal with Bad Scrum User Stories as a ScrumMaster
It is common in the early stages of Scrum implementation for there to be misunderstandings about what User Stories are for and what makes them useful. A ScrumMaster’s task is to be able to help the Team and Product Owner when they are faced with ineffective User Stories as they go into Sprint Planning.
Read the complete article here: https://agilepainrelief.com/notesfromatooluser/2019/01/deal-with-bad-scrum-user-stories-as-a-scrummaster.html
Scrum Guide in One Slide
Moisés Armani Ramírez posted the following image on LinkedIn that captures an overview of Scrum in the following slide:
You can find the original post here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/scrum-guide-one-slide-mois%C3%A9s-armani-ram%C3%ADrez/