Scrum Archives

Some notes about “8 Best Practices to Start a Scrum Project” article

Regularly I read Barry Overeem’s notes because he gives practical advice about Scrum, always in a concise and understandable way. In this recently updated article, he demonstrates 8 practices to set up at the very beginning of a Scrum project: before and during Sprint #1. If you find his article too long to read, here are some notes to sum it up.

Although they are relevant insights to set up a successful Scrum Team, I bring some comments (framed with <NC></NC> tags) because in my opinion this is too close to an ideal world: a majority of organisations are not designed to enable such a way of working.

Some insights about Scrum Master is the Master of Coaching

For a Scrum Master, ‘Coaching‘ is not the most exposed role (or ‘stance‘ as Barry Overeem talked about) in the current literature. So I would like to share a very interesting article: Scrum Master is the Master of Coaching written by Joshua Partogi. If you feel this is TLTR (Too Long To Read), here are the main insights.

Learn from the Trenches – Lean, Scrum, XP and Kanban in a nutshell

Software development with Lean Scrum XP Kanban

I have recently the book “Learn from the Trenches” from Henrik Kniberg ( @henrikkniberg ). This is an outstanding “how to” build complex and robust software, delivered on time and with quality.

Here is an extract (pages 106-113) I would like to share because it gives a brilliant overview about Lean, Scrum, XP (Extreme Programming) and Kanban.

How To Become A Certified Scrum Master – Exam Preparation And Guidance

This article was originally published on the KnowledgeHut blog.

Introduction to Certified Scrum Master

Who is the Scrum Master?

In one of our previous blog posts, Rumesh Wijetunge wrote some relevant insights about the role of Scrum Master. Wearing different hats, coach, enabler, facilitator, team leader, problem-solver, s/he is in charge of giving right directions to team members so that they reach objectives. First promoter of Agile mindset, values and principles, the Scrum Master uses the Scrum framework to help a team understanding, working on and achieving a common goal.

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Everything you need to know about PSM certification

This article was originally published on the KnowledgeHut blog.

I) Introduction to Professional Scrum Master

Who is Professional Scrum Master (PSM)?

We partially give some elements in a previous article on our blog: “ How To Choose A Scrum Master? “. On top of that, it is important to highlight that the Professional Scrum Master wear different hats according to the context: s/he is a coach, facilitator, enabler, problem- solver, proxy. His/Her main characteristic is to embody Servant Leadership. And basically, as the first promoter of Agile in the organization, s/he truly has the Agile mindset and is more than willing to share it.

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Agile quiz: getting more capacity out of your team

On a quite similar model of this Scrum quiz I published some days ago, here is another quiz about Agile, with 10 questions targeting in particular what is called the ‘capacity’ of a team.

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5 questions for an easy Scrum quiz

Do you want to assess your knowledge about Scrum theory? Here are 5 questions I copied when attending to the MOOC ‘Managing an Agile Team‘ on the Coursera platform.

The 5 correct answers are at the end of the post. Feel free to put a comment and tell me your opinion about this (easy) quiz.

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Why I feel natural with Agile principles

I have been working in an Agile environment for some years, and I have always felt at my ease. Why? In a short, because the 12 Agile principles are ‘common sense’ to me, I feel well and easy to understand and apply them.

Let’s take them one by one.

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Scrum and Kanban: what are the differences?

When talking about Agile, Scrum and Kanban are among the most notorious frameworks. One used to hear: “I want to do Agile, let’s perform Scrum or Kanban”. Because they distinctly bring added-value to specific contexts, this is relevant to keep in mind their very own particularities.

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4 reasons Daily Stand-up meeting is useful for the whole team and its members

Some days ago, a colleague told me:

– « Some people in my department run a daily meeting of one hour, sometimes even more. No agenda, barely some actions to be taken, only debating about ideas. »

– (Me): « Why do not they use Scrum approach and especially the Daily Stand-up meeting? »

– « This would be the same problem, daily meeting is not useful. This is better to do meeting when necessary. »

– « A short (and timeboxed) meeting is very useful », here is why…

The Daily Stand-up meeting (DS) must be done in 15 minutes maximum and involve maximum 9 people. It is a mandatory components of Scrum framework and is very enriching and useful for these reasons:

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