Author: jcdejong

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Ten sentences with all the Scrum Master advice you’ll ever need

Mike Cohn has been a Scrum Master for over 20 years. Over that time, he gave and collected quite a lot of advice and distilled it down to the ten best bits for you:

  1. Never Commit the Team to Anything Without Consulting Them First
  2. Remember You’re There to Help The Team Look Good
  3. Don’t Beat the Team over the Head with an Agile Rule Book
  4. Nothing Is Permanent So Experiment with Your Process
  5. Ensure Team Members and Stakeholders View Each Other as Peers
  6. Protect the Team, Including in More Ways than You May Think
  7. Banish Failure from Your Vocabulary
  8. Praise Often But Always Sincerely
  9. Encourage the Team to Take Over Your Job
  10. Shut Up and Listen

Read the complete article here: https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/ten-sentences-with-all-the-scrum-master-advice-youll-ever-need

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10 powerful strategies for breaking down Product Backlog Items in Scrum

Teams that have mastered Scrum know that the key to success lies in a just-in-time, increasingly refined, breakdown of work on the Product Backlog. They prefer Sprint Backlogs with many small (functional) items instead of just a few large ones. Smaller items improve flow and reduce the risk of failing the sprint. In this article, I will explain why the breakdown of work is important, and why it should be done across functional — instead of technical — boundaries. Christiaan Verwijs offers 10 useful strategies that experienced Scrum Teams use to break down work in this article: https://medium.com/the-liberators/10-powerful-strategies-for-breaking-down-user-stories-in-scrum-with-cheatsheet-2cd9aae7d0eb

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How writing Unit Tests forces you to write Good Code: And 7 bad arguments why you shouldn’t

Unit Testing is about writing good, well-designed, decoupled code that, as a result, is automatically testable.

Good Code is code that works well and is easy to maintain, extend, comprehend and understand (in the present and in the future).

The following (well-established) practices are important:

  • Reduce coupling
  • Maximize encapsulation
  • Single responsibilities
  • DRY
  • Open/closed
  • Documentation
  • Use design patterns

What is a Good Unit Test?

  • Tests only your class, not it’s depedancies
  • Input/output checks
  • Hypothesis-based
  • Concept-based
  • Small
  • Intuitive
  • Uses business/domain terminology

Reasons why you should not write a unit test:

  • ‘Unit testing takes too much time or is too difficult’
  • ‘Unit testing is a luxury (we don’t have)’
  • ‘Unit testing is not necessary, because I already write Good Code’
  • ‘Unit testing is not possible with this legacy code’
  • ‘I don’t have enough knowledge of Unit Testing’
  • ‘Unit testing are inferior to regression/integration/manual tests’
  • ‘Someone else (like a tester) can write tests for my code’

Read the complete article here: https://medium.com/the-liberators/how-writing-unit-tests-forces-you-to-write-good-code-and-7-bad-arguments-why-you-shouldnt-9b0cc3461d7a

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The True Cost of Rewrites

Your code is complex and working with it is difficult. Years of development and bug fixes have you ready to declare bankruptcy on your technical debt and start again from scratch. It feels so freeing to leave all your past mistakes behind and start over in a new technology and do everything right this time.

Before you do a cost-benefit analysis on rewriting your application, take the time to consider the true costs of the effort. I think you’ll find it almost never pays off to approach a rewrite in this way.

Read the complete article here: https://8thlight.com/blog/doug-bradbury/2018/11/27/true-cost-rewrites.html

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The Scrum Master Craft

Being a Scrum Master is a craft, as it is a combination of knowledge, skill and experience that enables you as a Scrum Master to be effective.

The duty of the Scrum Master is to reveal not Resolve. There are many anti-patterns from the misunderstanding around Servant Leadership.

Flow works best in a pull-based system. This applies to learning as well as work. Create a welcoming space for people to share ideas and discuss with each other. Try as hard as possible not to offer unsolicited advice!

A technique Simon Reindl has found helpful is to flip every statement into a question. “You seem to be covering up progress” becomes “How are you making your work transparent?”.

W.A.I.T. (Why Am I Talking?)

A phrase he heard a lot is “The person talking is the one doing the learning”. The meme/trope of the evil villain monologuing, while their downfall is being prepared for them is not a good space to be in within a team. This was summarised by Andy Hiles as W.A.I.T.

Read the complete article here: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/scrum-master-craft

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Servant Leadership 101: The 4 V’s to Create a Strong Foundation

Servant-leaders must create a strong foundation that helps people feel empowered to take action, enables them to move forward in a common direction despite uncertainty, and to feel inspired and resourceful during challenging times.

The 4 V’s can help you establish this strong foundation:

  • Vision – “What do we want?”
  • Values – “What is important about that?”
  • Value – “What value are we creating? What outcomes indicate we are succeeding?”
  • Validation – “How will we measure valuable outcomes? How will we validate our assumptions about value?”

Read the complete article here: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/servant-leadership-101-4-vs-create-strong-foundation