Scrum Master Certification Training

TODO

• Take 2-day Course
• Review scrum.org website
• Study The Scrum Guide (Nov 2020)
• Take Practice Exams
• Purchase PSM I Assessment
• Take and pass the exam
• Professional Scrum Master Certified

Agile Manifesto

• Agile is a mindset
  • A cultural change, a different way of thinking
  • Scrum masters have to bring that thought to the team
  • It's not a time-management system, but a value-management system
• 4 Roles, 5 Events, 3 Artifacts
  • Understanding these is not enough, it takes a long time of experience to change your mindset
• Agile Culture
  • A red metric is when the Plan is >30% off of actual team performance... and the plan needs to be changed.
  • Team members are team contributors and focus on team success even if it means delaying or missing individual commitments
  • Teams are groups of people who collaborate to achieve a common goal. There is no lead.
  • Small increments of code, build, integrate
  • Failures are learning opportunities and points of improvement
• Predictive vs Empirical Process
  • Predictive is to make a plan and then follow it
  • Empirical is to update the plan as more information comes in (think of hurricane planning)
    • Divide and Conquer (break down large pieces of work or process or organization)
    • Inspect and Adapt (product, process, plan)
    • Create transparency (people work better when they have all the information)
• 4 Value Statements
  • We value Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools
    • Higher morale and better results when people are working together and collaborating in teams
  • We value Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation
    • Needs change over time... product needs to meet the needs not the requirements
    • To bring it down a level, we can say: Product Owner Collaboration over Acceptance Criteria Negotiation
  • We value Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation
    • We don't want our system to be delivered, shelved and never used
  • We value Responding to Change over Following a Plan
    • Adaptive planning
• 12 Principles of Agile Development
  • Customer-Related Principles 
    • Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
    • Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
    • Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
      • Agile says work iteratively (first iteration could be 3 weeks, second one 4 weeks, etc.). In scrum, there needs to be cadence and consistency in length of iterations.
    • Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
      • In scrum, the "Business Person" is the Product Owner
  • Business-Related Principles
    • Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
    • The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
    • Working product is the primary measure of progress.
      • If you finish the requirements, the design, the architecture, etc. you are still 0% done
      • Need to get things done really early
    • Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
      • Because of scrum (and 2-week sprints), this one goes out the window... sometimes we overcommit to a sprint. Scrum Master needs to make sure they don't do that.
  • Team-Related Principles
    • Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
    • Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.
    • The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
    • At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Scrum

Framework

• Why is it a Framework
  
  • Process - a sequence of procedures and activities with inputs, outputs, entrance criteria, exit criteria
  • Methodology - set of principles, tools, practices which can be used to guide processes
  • Framework - loose, but incomplete structure that describes a small set of elements and activities
• 4 Roles
  • Product Owner
  • Scrum Master
  • Developers
  • Stakeholders
• 5 Events
  • Sprint
  • Sprint Planning
  • Daily Scrum
  • Sprint Review
  • Sprint Retrospective
• 3 Artifacts
  • Product Backlog
  • Sprint Backlog
  • Increment

Roles

Scrum Master

• Skillset:
  • Servant leader with a background in Agile and Scrum
  • Skilled in domain knowledge, coaching, facilitating, and teaching with a passion for delivery
• Responsibilities:
  • Scrum Team's expert and coach for Scrum
  • Ensures impediments that would prevent the Scrum Team from meeting its sprint goal are removed
  • Prevent the team from being distracted from internal or external sources
    • Internal like if the team is about to make a bad planning decision
    • External like if a manager is trying to pull people off the team
• Accountability:
  • Accountable for the scrum team's effectiveness
  • In service to the scrum team, product owner, organization
• Service
  •  Not a team lead, but a facilitator

Product Owner

• Skillset:
  • Visionary with strong leadership and communication skills
  • Knowledgeable in customer needs and focused on maximizing value to stakeholders
• Responsibilities:
  • Maximize value of product and work by dev team
  • Clearly express backlog items
    • Daily and weekly grooming of the product backlog
  • Ensure product backlog is visible to all
  • Voice of the customer
  • Order items to achieve goals and missions
  • Optimize the value of the work
  • Ensure developers understand items in product backlog to level needed
  • Define acceptance criteria
  • Accept/Reject work results

Developers

• Scrum Team is 10 or fewer people
• Skillset:
  • Creative problem solvers with excellent communication skills
  • The ability to self direct while supporting a larger team
• Responsibilities:
  • Collaborate on solutions
  • Creates deliverable products
  • Mutual accountability
  • No sub-teams
  • Support Team Planning
  • Implement tasks in timebox
  • Minimize work in progress
  • Communicate needs and dependencies
  • Ensure quality products
  • Continuously learn.

Stakeholders

• Skillset:
  • Anyone affected by project or products that scrum teams are delivering
• Responsibilities:
  • Provide regular feedback
  • Attend demonstrations
  • Identify risks
  • Clearly articulate needs
  • Collaborate with other stakeholders and team
  • Respect others

Events

Introduction

• What makes events events is that they are timeboxed - they have a maximum duration
  • Sprints are events, but are special in that their timebox is both a maximum and a minimum

Sprint

• Heartbeat of Scrum
• Duration <= 1 Month
  • Most common is 2-weeks
• Result: Increment
• Next sprint begins immediately after conclusion of previous sprint
• No changes are made that endanger the sprint goal
• Quality goals do not decrease
• Scope may be re-negotiated between team and Product Owner
• Sprints may be cancelled if the sprint goal becomes obsolete - only the PO has the authority to cancel sprint

Sprint Planning

• Product Owner and team determine Sprint Goal
• Product Owner suggests user stories for team to implement
• Team reviews their velocity and capacity. Negotiates with Product Owner (Scrum Master may help)
• Team and PO agree on user stories to implement
• Team breaks user stories down into small tasks and create Sprint Backlog
• Scrum Team commits to the Sprint Goal
  • They aren't committing to the tasks or their stories or the backlog - they are committing to the Sprint Goal
• 4-hour meeting for a 2-week sprint