The Dark Side of the Scrum Guide

Sjoerd Nijland has written a great blogpost about his journey to PSMIII and the nuances in words from the Scrum Guide. Such as:

  • Framework, Methodology, Process, Techniques
  • Event, Meeting
  • Development
  • Done, “Done”, Ready, Shippable, Releasable
  • Self-organising
  • Facilitate, Serve
  • Visible, Open, Transparent, Accessible
  • Titles vs Roles and Multi-disciplinary vs Cross-functional.
  • When is a Sprint Backlog created? And is it considered output of a Sprint Backlog?
  • When does the Sprint Planning take place?

Read the complete post here: https://medium.com/serious-scrum/the-dark-side-of-the-scrum-guide-835b298f8140

Asking the right questions; how to help a Scrum Team switch from a technical to a functional Backlog

One of the biggest challenges for a Scrum Team is to switch from a technical to a functional perspective on their work. Christiaan Verwijs has developed a set of helpful questions that often trigger teams into a functional frame of mind.

  • Why is it important that we implement this?
  • What problem of stakeholders and/or end-users do we solve by doing this?
  • What personas benefit from this, and why? (given that you have personas)
  • How would sales explain the benefits of this to customers and/or users
  • What reasons would an end-user have to want this?
  • How would you explain this to a colleague who is not part of this project?
  • How would you explain this to your spouse, at home, after a hard of work?
  • What would you show during the review to demonstrate that this is working?
  • If you are a user, how would you test if this works?
  • What changes would a user notice after implementing this?
  • What stakeholders benefit from this, and why?
  • If we wouldn’t do this, what would end-users and or customers miss or be unable to do?
  • What compliment would a happy user of customer give after delivering this?
  • How would you explain this to a potential end-user?
  • What steps would you go through in the application to test if this works?
  • If we’d put this in release notes that will be read by end-users, how would we announce it?

Read the original article here: https://medium.com/the-liberators/asking-the-right-questions-how-to-help-a-scrum-team-switch-from-a-technical-to-a-functional-bee6c1598487

Liberating Strategy

Liberating Strategy begins and ends with Liberating Structures (LS). They are simple rules that make it possible to include and engage every voice in shaping the future and strategy. LS can be used to not only create a different kind of strategy but also to transform the whole process of strategy-making.

Read the complete article by Keith McCandless and Johannes Schartau here: https://medium.com/@keithmccandless/liberating-strategy-6fda41f6c1

The Reading List for Agile Newbies

Barry Overeem created a list of must-reads for agile newbies:

  • The Agile Manifesto
  • The Scrum Guide – Jeff Sutherland, Ken Schwaber
  • The Power of Scrum – Rini van Solingen
  • Scrum: A Pocket Guide – Gunther Verheyen
  • Succeeding with Agile – Mike Cohn
  • The Agile Samurai – Jonathan Rasmusson
  • The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick Lencioni
  • The Scrum Field Guide – Mitch Lacey
  • The Phoenix Project – Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford
  • Kanban – David J. Anderson
  • Clean Code – Robert C. Martin

Read his complete blogpost here: http://www.barryovereem.com/the-reading-list-for-agile-newbies/

Engage Everyone in Making Sense of Profound Challenges

Encourage people to listen and understand each other’s perspective on a profound, shared topic or challenge instead of trying to convince or persuade others to see it your way. In this article, Christiaan Verwijs & Barry Overeem  explain how you can use the Liberating Structure “Conversation Café” to achieve this: https://medium.com/the-liberators/engage-everyone-in-making-sense-of-profound-challenges-c66e44ba00f2