Scrum Trainer

Today I received my Scrum Trainer logo from Scrum.org. I can now deliver the 2 day advanced class 'Scrum In Depth.' This is a great course that really provides a lot of practical guidance for Scrum Masters.

More details on the course can be found here http://www.scrum.org/storage/Scrum%20in%20Depth.pdf#view=fit and here http://www.scrum.org/scrumindepth/

I really like this course as it provides standard material for students. So regardless of who takes the course or where it is delivered the content is the same - and the content was written by Ken Schwaber - who better to learn from!

Scrum.org have also launched the Professsional Scrum Master assessment, see http://www.scrum.org/scrummaster/. Currently there are two levels:-

Professional Scrum Master I (Beginner) and Professional Scrum Master II (Intermediate.) The Scrum In Depth course helps to prepare people for the Professional Scrum Master II program. The great thing about these certifications is that they are backed by assessment. So students actually have to pass a test. For the PSM II this includes essay style questions as well as mulitple choice (and its really pretty tough!!)

Feel free to get in touch if you would like any more details on this, or any types of training.

FishBowl Retrospective

I recently ran a retrospective for one of our Scrum teams. I decided to mix things up a bit and use a technique that I haven't used in a long time - the FishBowl.



The idea behind the FishBowl is quite simple - assemble some chairs (I used 4 chairs for about 12 people) in a semi-circle. These are the fish. Everyone else sits behind the inner circle - these are the observers.



I stood near the FishBowl, encouraged conversation and made sure that the rules were followed. I also took notes using a flip chart.



Rules

• Only the 'fish' can speak


• The 'fish' can only speak when exactly one of the fish' seats are empty


• Anyone may come forward and sit in the empty chair at any time


• Discussion then stops until one of the 'fish' relinquishes their seat and returns to an observer seat


• People may move between areas as often as they like

This has a number of effects on the group.

• People realize that they may only have a limited time to speak and will make points quite directly


• The group self-manages people who 'hog' the speaking chairs back into the observer pool


• When people feel passionate about a particular topic they jump into a fish chair

The session went really well - lots of intense passionate debate. I think that this is a really useful technique and a good way to introduce variation into a retrospective. Try it and see how it works for you!

Product Backlog Grooming

This is something that we are focused on right now. As grooming is not one of the 3 scrum ceremonies it tends to get forgotten.

Backlog grooming involves breaking down the highest priority stories (for the upcoming sprint/s) into smaller stories until they are fine grained and well understood by the team. When Sprint Planning occurs these items are then easy to plan and estimate.

The Scrum Guide mentions that teams can spend up to 10% of their time on grooming the backlog. In practice, most of our teams are not close to that 10%.

Some teams like to have regular twice weekly grooming sessions of around 90minutes, whilst others do some every day after their daily stand up meeting. Either way I think that it is a really essential activity.

In my experience, skimping on grooming results in many extra tasks being added mid-sprint, and stories being de-scoped because the team can't get to them (due to these extra tasks that have been added.)

I would love to hear about other peoples experience with grooming - how often, what percentage of times do your teams use?

Scrum.org

I mentioned http://www.scrum.org/ in my last post. I have recently completed the Professional Scrum Developer Trainer certification. This means that I can now train people for the Professional Scrum Developer program. This is backed by an assessment hosted on Scrum.org.

I think that this is a great program. For a long time teams have suffered from the "magic happens here" section of the scrum diagram. This course actually helps teams learn what really happens in the 2/3 week sprint that turns out potentially shippable software.

There is currently a .Net program available that uses VS2010 and TFS 2010 as its tooling. However there is a Java program coming soon.

Scrum Alliance are also rumoured to be launching a Certified Developer program soon, so it will be interesting to compare...

Scrum Alliance are launching their own Certified Developer Program - see http://www.scrumalliance.org/pages/certified_scrum_developer

More details can be found here http://www.scrum.org/scrumdeveloper/

Introduction

so this is my first blog post...

By way of introduction, I am an Agile coach working in New Zealand helping my current company transition to Scrum. Definition of Done seems like an apt title for the blog as it can be one of the hardest things to uphold when times get tough.

I will hopefully be blogging weekly about scrum adoption topics and relevant links that I find.

So that's enough for the intro. Next up is the new Scrum.org training and assessment programs!