Month: April 2019

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Slaying Technical Debt

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Todd Miller discusses the concept of Technical Debt and ideas on how to work to remove it. He looks at different concepts and why removal over time is important to the long-term viability of a product.

  1. create a “Wall of Tech Debt” visible area
  2. every time you encounter tech debt, add a sticky note
  3. at each sprint planning, add a sticky to the sprint backlog and fix it.

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Product Backlog Refinement is a Scrum Team Responsibility

This article on Product Backlog refinement shows that Refinement is more than just a meeting where the whole Scrum Team is having a discussion. It requires and involves everyone with shared and special responsibilities. It’s easy to lose sight of the importance of Product Backlog refinement because of your focus on the Sprint. But making time for healthy Product Backlog Refinement makes way for an awesome collaboration and teamwork, building a product that customers really enjoy!

Read the complete article from Jasper Alblas here: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/scrum-trenches-product-backlog-refinement-scrum-team-responsibility

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How To Kickstart A Great Scrum Team (10 practical things to do)

In this post, Christiaan Verwijs shares his experiences on how to best Kickstart, Lift-off or Launch a (new) Scrum Team.

  • Understand team development (and your role in it)
    • Forming phase
    • Storming phase
    • Norming phase
    • Performing phase
    • Adjourning phase
  • Reserve time for the Kickstart
  • Getting to know each other is half the work
  • Teach Scrum
  • Formulate a Team Vision
  • Create a Team Contract
  • Pick a Team Name
  • Set expectations
  • Retrospectives, retrospectives, retrospectives
  • Involve management to support the Kickstart
  • ‘Bring it to the team’

Read the complete article here: https://medium.com/the-liberators/how-to-kickstart-a-great-scrum-team-10-practical-things-to-do-2143bdde1a8d

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What does a new scrum master do within his/her first few weeks in the role?

Woody Arnold answered this question on this page and here is the quick summary:

Day 1 (Monday)

  • Admin – Paper work, meet with HR, get connected.
  • Meet with manager. Understand expectations & situation.
  • Schedule meetings for the week – 1-on-1’s with team members, customers etc.
  • Discern the situation, develop hypothesis.

Day 2 (Tuesday)

  • Start floating ideas – problems you’re hearing, solutions.
  • If you need a half day scoping meeting on Thursday, you need to schedule it today to give people a little warning.
  • Continue with 1-on-1’s

Day 3 (Wednesday)

  • Create a short presentation for the Thursday meeting. This contains for instance: What you’ve heard, changes you’d like to implement starting next week.

Day 4 (Thursday)

  • Prep for planning meeting.
  • Meeting. Quick presentation – Problems we’re trying to solve, why Scrum… etc.

Week 2

  • Monday – Sprint planning, and the start of sprint 1.
  • Daily Standups – Coach the team into making effective daily standups.
  • Sprint Review – schedule the sprint review for the last day of the sprint. Make sure to invite “customers”.
  • Retrospective – Schedule the retrospective for after the sprint review.