Liberating Structures and (distributed) Scrum Events

For an upcoming meetup I’m preparing a session on how to use LS for Scrum Events and especially events where the participants are distributed and joining the event remotely.

Here’s a brief overview of some LS that can be used for the different Scrum events. I’ve marked all structures with an * that I’ve used myself in a distributed setting.

Refinement / Planning

Daily Scrum

Sprint Review

Sprint Retrospective

On the liberating Structures website you can find a design checklist for virtual meetings. Since the link is currently no longer working, you can find the document here:

How to: A Great Product Backlog Refinement Workshop

To conduct the workshop, follow these steps:

  • In 30-minute cycles,
    • The PO presents the next PBIs that aren’t Ready to the team. (up to 5 minutes)
    • The Development Team decomposes into sub-teams of 3-4 people.
    • Each sub-team selects one of the next PBIs and gets it Ready. (15-20 minutes)
      • Use User Stories, 3 Cs, INVEST, your Definition of Ready, etc. to guide you.
      • If Readiness is blocked by an impediment outside the Scrum team, the sub-team makes a concrete plan for what they will do to get the PBI Ready before the next Sprint Planning or Backlog Refinement meeting.
    • Merge back into whole group, the full Scrum team.
    • Sub-teams present their work to the whole group. (5-10 minutes)
    • Take a break (5 minutes)
    • Repeat
  • Celebrate!

Read the original article here: https://kasperowski.com/how-to-a-great-product-backlog-refinement-workshop/

28 Product Backlog and Refinement Anti-Patterns

Scrum is a practical framework to build products, provided you identify in advance what to build. But even after a successful product discovery phase, you may struggle to make the right thing in the right way if your product backlog is not up to the job. Garbage in, garbage out – as the saying goes. The following article points at 28 of the most common product backlog anti-patterns – including the product backlog refinement process – that limit your Scrum team’s success.

Read the complete article here: https://age-of-product.com/28-product-backlog-anti-patterns/

Product Backlog Anti-Patterns