Scrum Tips
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How Scrum’s ‘Guardrails’ Protect Teams From Chaos
As we stated before, Scrum is for developing in Complicated/Complex environments. This ties nicely to the Cynefin (ku-NEV-in) framework, which breaks Decision-Space into four areas: Clear, Complicated, Complex, and Chaotic. The detailed definitions aren’t important to us right now; the only thing we need to know is that Chaos is very bad. Chaos makes things…
Read More5 Tips to Help Your Scrum Team Work Remotely (And Be Happy And Productive Doing It)
COVID-19 has caused a major upheaval in nearly every aspect of our daily lives, including in the workplace. Collocated Scrum Teams have become instantly distributed, working remotely from home offices (if you’re lucky), kitchen tables, and garage spaces. And, while working from home cuts down on your daily commute, dry cleaning bill, and happy hour…
Read MoreWhen A Team Graduates From Its Coach
When a Dev team, their Agile Coach, and Team Facilitator are working well together, it’s a great thing to see! The Agile Coach helps a number of teams to strengthen their use of Scrum, improve technical skills, and identify a team kaizen each Sprint. Each of these teams has a Facilitator whose role is to…
Read MoreZombie Standups (And How to Bring them Back to Life)
Are you Trapped in a Zombie Standup? Do you find yourself tuning out during Standup (Daily Scrum)? Do you feel like everybody’s monotonously reciting laundry list answers to the Three Questions: what you worked on yesterday, what you’re working on today, and…maybe…what impediments you’ve run into? When it’s your turn, do you find yourself facing…
Read More6 Signals of Collective Conflict Avoidance
The primary goal of Scrum Mastering[1] is to enable a Well-Formed Team™ (WFT). Ideally, a Well-Formed Team[2] would take on most of its own facilitation and coaching. However, some Teams get stuck in earlier stages of maturity that we describe as Collective Conflict Avoidance. Collective Avoidance is a norm that needs to be thoughtfully and…
Read MoreSleepwalking Through Scrum
How do we recognize when the way we’re “doing Scrum” is impeding our Agility? Two alternative scenarios are possible: The Team has fully internalized Agile practice in the past but now seems to be sleepwalking through the Ceremonies: the Team’s Agile practice has gotten stale, we’re sleepwalking through Scrum. The Team hasn’t experienced Agile practice…
Read MoreOne Step Back, Two Steps Forward
We were humming along as a Team; suddenly it feels like everybody’s got two left feet. What’s going on? Sometimes when a Team hits a rough patch, after a period of really working well together, it’s hard to understand what went wrong? We’ve faced tough challenges before… this feels different.
Read MoreTo Empower Your Scrum Teams, Provide Mission Protection
Scrum coaching and training usually focuses on strengthening your Dev Teams’ collaboration, empowering Scrum Mastering and Product Ownership. These ingredients are all required for Scrum Teams to achieve high-quality results. But a key ingredient is missing in creating the conditions for success: what 3Back calls Mission Protection.
Read MoreWhat Do You Do When You Finish a Sprint Early?
So, let me talk about the easy stuff first. One of the best things that can happen to a Scrum Team is that it finishes its work early in a Sprint. It amazes me that Teams are confused about what to do, but they are. So here goes… If the Team finishes early, it seems to me there are two choices:
Read MoreScrum as Superhero
Once upon a time, there was a company. A large, multi-layered organization ordered with the task of developing and launching new software. And not just any software. Complex software, unlike anything the organization or the public at large had seen, or used, before. The new software carried with it a set-in-stone launch deadline. The pressure was immediately on to go live. And not just go live in one small testing site; rather, to roll out the software and go live everywhere at the same time…
Read MoreSHHHHH!!! 5 Ways to Quiet Organizational Noise
Throughout our day, we experience an inordinate amount of noise. Whether it’s the garbage truck barreling down our road at 5 am, the dog that excitedly greets every passerby or the co-worker’s emphatic phone conversations on the other side of the paper-thin cubicle wall, noise is everywhere.
Read MoreWhen Should You Start a Sprint? When Should You Finish?
Starting. It’s on all of our minds as we work through the first week of the new year. The concept of starting brings to mind one of the most frequently asked questions I receive when I am both training and coaching. When should you start a Sprint? And, the question’s inevitable counterpart, when should you finish a Sprint?
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