International Scrum Institute Podcast

Hi there, Here is Yeliz Obergfell from International Scrum Institute. Recently, our CEO and Chief Trainer, Erkan Sutculer, has delivered his Scrum Institute’s Scrum MasterClass Training. This Scrum Institute training week has been ridiculously busy and exhaustive, but also a fun week for us. We can only hope that you enjoyed watching the Scrum Institute classes as much as we did while we were presenting them. Thanks a million times for showing up and even more so for actively engaging with us and our group of professionals. If you found this the Scrum Institute MasterClass valuable for your professional development and if you would love to continue learning together with us, here is the limited-time MasterClass Bundle. Scrum Institute MasterClass Many people have asked us since last week, what if they already possess one or some of the Scrum Institute programs provided in the MasterClass Bundle. If this is the case, we will be happy to swap them with other programs from our portfolio of International Scrum Institute and SkillFront programs to ensure that the MasterClass Bundle will perfectly comply with your goals and needs. After your enrollment to the Scrum Institute MasterClass Bundle, please let us know the names of certifications you had already completed in the past, and with which programs you would love to swap them. We’re going to immediately handle your swap request, and deliver your new Scrum Institute exam access codes. Did you know that the number one reason people fail in Scrum, DevOps, and Kanban is not due to the lack of business savviness and experience but because they don’t have formal Scrum Institute Scrum, DevOps, and Kanban trainings and certifications to prove their expertise? Here is the problem you face: Even if they feel that they need you as their Scrum, DevOps, and Kanban Professional for their teams and business, most people, teams, and companies do not know how to interview and select Scrum, DevOps, and Kanban Professionals, so they end up trusting and hiring the ones who have relevant Scrum Institute Scrum, DevOps and Kanban trainings and certifications. Which means without possessing proper Scrum Institute Scrum, DevOps, and Kanban Professional credentials, you’ll never get a chance to serve your clients and build a positive impact on their goals, lives, and businesses. Luckily for you, there is now a solution. Let me introduce you to the Scrum Institute MasterClass Bundle: 8 Certifications (including Scrum Master Accredited Certification) For Scrum, DevOps and Kanban Professionals to help everyone master in Scrum, DevOps, and Kanban skills and prove their expertise with courses and certifications. About Scrum Institute Scrum Institute is the Leading Independent Training, Certification, and Accreditation Institute that helps Companies and Professionals get accredited with worldwide renowned and recognized Scrum Certifications and prove their competence in the Scrum Domain. Scrum Institute empowers Professionals and Enterprises worldwide to build their Careers and Companies to sell their Outstanding Agile Products and Services. Scrum Institute Accreditation Scrum Institute is a private company officially registered in Switzerland. Scrum Institute build its services, and they serve you and your business from Switzerland with love. Scrum Institute has been founded and is being operated by Erkan Sutculer’s leadership. The registered purpose of Scrum Institute Accreditation officially attests that: Scrum Institute is accredited to provide education and certification services globally in ISO 9001, ISO 27001, ISO 20000, ISO 22301, ISO 14001, ISO 45001, ISO 50001, ISO 14298, Scrum, Kanban, Software Engineering, Six Sigma, Quality Management, DevOps, Leadership, Management, Software Testing and Project Management domains. The overall process to get your Scrum Institute MasterClass Bundle created by Yeliz Obergfell: 8 Certifications For Scrum, DevOps, and Kanban Professionals is simple, fast, and rewarding. Step-1: You register online.Step-2: We immediately send your companion training materials, exam access codes, and other bonuses for Scrum Institute MasterClass Bundle: 8 Certifications For Scrum, DevOps, and Kanban Professionals.Step-3: You take your online test exams and answer multiple-choice questions from your device within 2 years after registration.Step-4: We instantly send your lifetime valid and accredited Scrum Institute certifications and your shareable and verifiable digital badges after you pass your exams. Accredited Scrum Institute MasterClass Bunble How to know what Scrum Institute Programs are right for you? The best method we recommend to our students is to reflect on what you would like to accomplish in your career and then match those goals and plans to various Scrum roles and responsibilities. Scrum Masters: They’re servant leaders, but in the same organizational hierarchy level as the Scrum Team. They’re responsible for the correct application of the Scrum Framework within the team and business.Scrum Product Owners: They’re entrepreneurs. They bring and drive the vision. They don’t need to know necessarily how the product is being developed. And yet, they’re the bridge between engineering teams and business stakeholders, and they’re responsible for the ROI (Return on Investment) of their projects.Scrum Developers: They’re cross-functional designers, developers, architects, system engineers, and testers to get the job done! A Scrum Developer doesn’t always need to develop software, but he possesses skills and delivers work, including design, architecture, testing, test automation, etc.Agile Scrum Executives (Leaders): They are team leads, managers, directors, and other higher level executives who oversee agile transformation and business throughput of their agile Scrum organizations.Agile Coaches: Agile Coaches are usually (but not necessarily) experienced Scrum Masters. And yet, instead of being part of the Scrum Team, they typically oversee multiple Scrum teams remotely. They guide not only Scrum teams but also executives to strengthen the agile delivery and business culture.Scrum Trainers: Scrum Trainers go and train teams for a few days and then move to the next training assignment with other clients.Scaled Scrum Experts: They subtly run larger Scrum projects, even if your Scrum Team members are distributed in geographically separate locations! Please note that Scrum Institute Scrum MasterClass Bundle is closing very soon. This Scrum Institute course and certification program will sell for USD 1,997. This introductory price of USD 247 is a “Register for it now before it’s gone” offer, so act fast! Link for registration: https://www.scrum-institute.org/now Scrum Institute Team, Yeliz Obergfell and Erkan Sutculer

Invitation To Scrum Institute Entrepreneurship Masterclass Live, 10,11,12 January, 6+ Hours Live Teaching, 3 Day Sprint Dear Scrum Institute Friends, We're about a couple of weeks away from our free Scrum Institute Entrepreneurship Masterclass Event, where our founder, Erkan Sutculer is gonna be teaching live for 6+ hours and delivering a ton of value. We will broadcast this 3 Day Sprint, Live and Daily on January 10th, 11th, and 12th at 11 am CET on our Scrum Institute Private Entrepreneurship Masterclass Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/smasterclass Scrum Institute Entrepreneurship Masterclass Live Have you joined our private Scrum Institute Facebook group yet? This is a place you can meet, socialize, learn and support each other. It's kind of exclusive… not just anyone can get in… You've gotta be signed up for our community — which you already are. So we invite you to join us. This is a great chance to hang out with others who are going through the Scrum Institute Entrepreneurship Masterclass with you… mix and mingle with each other… get help from our coaches and staff… bounce ideas off each other and share inspiration… and just generally network and have fun. PLUS… It's basically one really big, awesome, virtual party… but no hangover at the end… and it will help grow your skills, knowledge, and perspective, which means an amazing career and life you dream of! We'll share the formula that has been used by thousands of successful entrepreneurs — and show you how you can put it to work right away. You will learn and be ready to: find & launch your business,build a predictable marketing system that works around the clock,and magnetically attract a flood of new customers that pay, stay, and refer. This is a “don't miss” event, so put it on your calendar right now. AND we're going to have a lot going on in this Scrum Institute Masterclass — way more than the three live lessons — and way more than I can share in this email. The Scrum Institute Private Entrepreneurship Masterclass Facebook Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/smasterclass) will have additional live sessions. Our coaches will be answering questions here, plus you can network with other members of the Entrepreneurship Masterclass: CLICK BELOW to join the Scrum Institute Entrepreneurship Masterclass Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/smasterclass Bottom line — it's gonna be supercool, and we can't wait to share it with you. We’re looking forward to seeing you live on Monday, January 10th at 11 am CET for the day #1 broadcast of 3 Day Sprint. Mark your calendars! OK… that's it. See you soon…Best regards,Scrum InstituteYeliz Obergfell, Erkan Sutculer

Scrum Institute Free Scrum Video Training Scrum Masterclass Live Event Video Recordings (10+ Hours Training — NEW) Ladies and Gentlemen, last week has been ridiculously busy and exhaustive for both Erkan Sutculer and Yeliz Obergfell, but also a fun week for us. We can only hope that you enjoyed watching the classes as much as we did while we were presenting them. Please send your “likes” and “comments” if that’s the case and thanks a million times for showing up every day and actively engaging with us and the audience. If you found those classes valuable for your professional development, and if you would love to continue learning together with us, here are the Scrum Institute Scrum Masterclass Live Event Video Recordings produced by Erkan Sutculer and Yeliz Obergfell, with limited-time availability. https://www.scrum-institute.org/Free-Scrum-Video-Training International Scrum Institute, Scrum Institute Free Scrum Video Training Your Exclusive Training Gift From Scrum Institute's Erkan Sutculer and Yeliz Obergfell Scrum Institute Scrum Masterclass Live Event Video Recordings are sincerely exclusive gifts for our community members and followers like you to appreciate and celebrate your commitment to learning and investing in your career. That is why we’ll never offer these video recordings to the public audience for free, and we’ll very soon sell them for hundreds of dollars. Please be informed that this free video training will be removed soon, so take your time to watch before we will remove them from our Scrum Institute website. If you want to become an all-around agile professional, if you want to conveniently manage your agile projects, and if you want to develop yourself as a master/expert/leader, and most importantly, if you want to become “The Northstar” and “The Guide” of others and your own career, don’t miss out on our free video training, Erkan Sutculer's Scrum Institute Scrum Masterclass Live Event Video Recordings (10+ Hours Training — NEW). https://www.scrum-institute.org/Free-Scrum-Video-Training We will be happy to see you in, work with you, and serve you. Have a great day and take good care of yourself. Yeliz Obergfell, Erkan Sutculer International Scrum Institute, Official, The Most Popular And The Most AffordableScrum Traning and Scrum Certification Programs https://www.scrum-institute.org

In this episode of SkillFront Magazine, we talked to SkillFront’s Yeliz Obergfell, Vice President – Professional Services, about SkillFront, the premier skill development and official credentialing organization, compliant with ISO/IEC 17021:2015 and ISO/IEC 17024:2012 standards for certification bodies. Our interesting subject for today is SkillFront ISO Certifications For Businesses. Why Should Companies Get SkillFront ISO 9001 Company Certification? The SkillFront Certified Professional Certification programs' chief goal is to be market relevant, consensus-based, support innovation, and provide solutions to global challenges. That means thriving career chances for professionals, and meeting and exceeding demands from businesses and their valuable clients. Having formal ISO quality management systems in place is vital to getting clients to sign up for offers, and that's why having an ISO 9001 company certification is so important. If you're wondering about the easiest and fastest way to get an ISO 9001 company certification, you're in the right place. In this episode today, we tell you all about our offer of an online ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Systems Certified Business Certification. It's a perfect way to ensure that you have ISO 9001 quality management systems in place. It will also help you prove compliance with these globally-recognized and continuously improving standards, thanks to the ISO certification for your company. Utilizing our fast and easy system for ISO 9001 company certification is a no brainer, and in this video, we'll go over all the reasons why you should do it today! SkillFront represents Swiss Quality From ISO’s Home: ISO 9001 Company Certification, Affordable, Fast Track and Online. Let us Help you Get Your Business Certification For ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Systems, Affordable, Fast Track and 100% Online All-Inclusive Package! SkillFront ISO Certifications For Businesses How Much Does ISO 9001 Certification Cost? SkillFront offers One Small Discounted Price. The ISO 9001 Certification Bundle includes everything you and your company need to succeed. The ISO 9001 Certification Bundle includes: ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Systems Certified Business Certification (With an Online Verifiable Barcode on it)BONUS #1. Sharable and Verifiable Digital Badge (Your Company Name Engraved On It, Custom Made For You)BONUS #2. ISO 9001:2015 Quality Manual: 45+ Pages The one-time discounted registration fee for this entire ISO 9001 Certification is only USD 497. There are no other fees ever after your registration. SkillFront ISO 9001 Certification Cost What are the requirements for ISO 9001 Certification? SkillFront offers its worldwide renowned and recognized services with 100% Money-Back Guarantee. Are you afraid of failing in your registration for the ISO 9001 Company Certification? You no longer need to be because we are going to do all of the legwork for you. We take all risks on our shoulders, so you can focus on doing what you do best, which is serving your clients at your highest levels possible and positively influence their outcomes that would not happen otherwise. All legitimate businesses that serve the professional and public interest in good faith are eligible to comply with ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Systems Certified Business standards. Nevertheless, at the end of our validation process for your company, if our team will conclude that we will be unable to certify your business and its practices in ISO 9001:2015 standards, we will hassle free refund your full registration fee without asking any questions. What are the benefits of ISO 9001:2015 Certification? ISO 9001 are the standards that set out the requirements for quality management systems. It helps businesses and organizations to be more efficient and improve customer satisfaction. Implementing ISO 9001 quality management systems will help you: Assess the overall context of your organization to define who is affected by your work and what they expect from you. This will enable you to clearly state your objectives and identify new business opportunities.Put your customers first, making sure you consistently meet their needs and enhance their satisfaction. This can lead to repeat customers, new clients and increased business for your organization.Work in a more efficient way as all your processes will be aligned and understood by everyone in the business or organization. This increases productivity and efficiency, bringing internal costs down.Meet the necessary statutory and regulatory requirements.Expand into new markets, as some sectors and clients require ISO 9001 before doing business.Identify and address the risks associated with your organization.Compliant with the standards of ISO/IEC 17024:2012 Conformity: General requirements for bodies operating certification of companies and professionals, ISO/IEC 17021:2015 Conformity: Requirements for bodies providing audit and certification of management systems. SkillFront ISO 9001 Certification How Can Companies Register and Get Started With SkillFront ISO 9001 Certification? I am sure that you must be very busy serving your customers and business stakeholders at your highest levels possible, so I don’t want to take up too much of your time. Today I would like to give you a brief outline of all our ISO company certification programs. You can browse our limited-time reduced plans and more info about these programs from their respective links below, so you can see and decide if these programs work for your organization: ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Systems Certified BusinessISO/IEC 27001:2013 Information Security Management Systems Certified BusinessISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management Systems Certified BusinessISO/IEC 20000:2018 Information Technology Service Management Systems Certified BusinessISO 22301:2019 Business Continuity Management Systems Certified BusinessISO 50001:2018 Energy Management Systems Certified BusinessISO 45001:2018 Occupational Health And Safety Management Systems Certified BusinessISO 14298:2013 Graphic Technology – Management Of Security Printing Processes Certified Business SkillFront’s Website and How People Can Contact SkillFront? SkillFront Official HomapageSkillFront on LinkedInSkillFront on TwitterSkillFront on FacebookSkillFront on CrunchbaseSkillFront on InstagramSkillFront on Apple PodcastsSkillFront on RedditSkillFront on SpotifySkillFront on IssuuSkillFront on PinterestSkillFront on BehanceSkillFront on AmazonSkillFront on F6SSkillFront on Trending GeniusSkillFront on Startup InfoSkillFront on MediumSkillFront on DribbleSkillFront on Education AdviceSkillFront on AngelSkillFront on StitcherSkillFront on Player FMSkillFront on Product HuntSkillFront on YouTubeSkillFront on VimeoSkillFront on InfogramSkillFront on Legit Open CorporatesSkillFront Podcast HomeSkillFront Google PodcastSkillFront Tune In PodcastSkillFront Castbox Podcast Final Notes and Verdict About SkillFront, The Competence Platform For Professionals and Businesses In summary, SkillFront is a great company to work with and collaborate. SkillFront Accreditation: SkillFront Is The Premier Skill Development and Official Credentialing Organization, Compliant With ISO/IEC 17024:2012 Standards For Certification Bodies. SkillFront is proud to be compliant with the standards of ISO/IEC 17024:2012 Conformity: General requirements for bodies operating certification of companies and professionals, ISO/IEC 17021:2015 Conformity: Requirements for bodies providing audit and certification of management systems, and ISO 9001:2015 Conformity: Requirements for quality management systems. SkillFront is a private LLC registered in Switzerland. They build their services, and they serve you and your business from Switzerland with love. SkillFront is the leading organizational and professional competence development and certification body that provides education and certification services globally in all domains of business and information technologies. SkillFront Address and Location: Samstagernstrasse 57 8832 Wollerau Switzerland SkillFront CEO: Yeliz Obergfell (Yeliz Obergfell on LinkedIn) SkillFront Other Key Executives: Erkan Sutculer (Erkan Sutculer on LinkedIn), Eric Lefebvre (Eric Lefebvre on LinkedIn) SkillFront Reviews From Satistified Professionals and Enterprises: https://www.facebook.com/skillfront/reviews See you next time!

Inside How SkillFront Works, SkillFront shares the biggest “a-ha moments” and professional lessons with complete transparency. From tough lessons learned, to mindset, to pure professional strategy, SkillFront pulls you into a world of business professionals and entrepreneurs, and shares journeys and lessons of many companies and professionals to building great results for their clients and audiences. All, thanks to the help and unprecedented assistance they obtained from the SkillFront, skill and competence platform for professionals and companies. SkillFront, Skill Platform Recognized By ISO/IEC 17024:2012, ISO/IEC 17021:2015  and ISO 9001:2015 SkillFront Is The Premier Skill Development and Official Credentialing Organization, Compliant With ISO/IEC 17024:2012 Standards For Certification Bodies. SkillFront is a public-benefit certification body that provides education and certification services. SkillFront accreditation operates under industry-recognised international standards and requirements, and maintains integrity while taking into account professional and public interest. SkillFront reviews provide objective evidence that a person or an organization operates at the highest level of ethical, legit SkillFront, professional, and technical standards. SkillFront certifies a wide range of professionals and organizations, including governmental entities, commercial businesses, and professional associations. SkillFront certification programs are based on recognized and peer-reviewed international standards that ensure global acceptance. The SkillFront Certified Professional Certification programs’ chief goal is to be market relevant, consensus-based, support innovation, and provide solutions to global challenges. That means thriving career chances for professionals, and meeting and exceeding demands from businesses and their valuable clients. Take a deep breath. It’s your time to unlock the success blueprint as a SkillFront professional. Yeliz Obergfell, Erkan Sutculer, SkillFront

International Scrum Institute, Switzerland (Registration Number: CHE-138.739.580) Address: Samstagernstrasse 57, 8832 Wollerau, Switzerland Web: https://www.scrum-institute.org About International Scrum Institute International Scrum Institute, located at the Home of Quality, in Switzerland, is the premier competence development and credentialing organization and certification body for Scrum software development and delivery framework. Established in 2011, as one of the most experienced Scrum authorities, International Scrum Institute is a public-benefit certification body that provides education and certification services. International Scrum Institute operates under the latest Scrum Guide 2020 Edition, industry-approved international standards, requirements, and proven best practices to empower its clients to create value, develop and deliver great software. International Scrum Institute has proven its worldwide acceptance and reputation by being the choice of more than 673,700 Scrum Practitioners in 143 Countries. (Read 1000+ Successful User Case Studies) International Scrum Institute maintains integrity and impartiality while taking into account professional and public interest. International Scrum Institute provides objective evidence that a person or an organization operates at the highest and most up-to-date level of ethical, legal, professional, and technical standards of the Scrum framework. International Scrum Institute certifies a wide range of professionals and organizations, including governmental entities, military forces, commercial businesses, and professional associations. (Scrum Institute LinkedIn Community) International Scrum Institute certification programs are based on recognized national and international compliance standards that ensure domestic and global acceptance. International Scrum Institute is the leading skill development and certification body for professionals and organizations compliant with the Agile Alliance® corporate membership standards that form a unified system for recognizing competent Scrum organizations worldwide. As a global skill development and certification body, International Scrum Institute is committed to ensuring excellent service standards delivered by those we comply with. International Scrum Institute is proud to be an approved corporate member of Agile Alliance®. (More Info About Scrum Institute’s Agile Alliance® Membership) Scrum Institute Accreditations The International Scrum Institute certification programs’ chief goal is to be market relevant, consensus-based, support innovation, and provide solutions to global challenges. That means thriving career chances for professionals, and meeting and exceeding demands from businesses and their valuable clients. For Questions and Clarification: Contact Person: Yeliz Obergfell, VP Student Experience, (LinkedIn) Mailing Address: Samstagernstrasse 57, 8832 Wollerau, Switzerland Email Address: yeliz.obergfell@scrum-institute.org

Scrum Institute, Kanban Framework Episode #12 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox Limit Work In Progress (WIP) With Kanban Why do we need a definition of Work In Progress (WIP) Limit in Kanban? Because Kanban is a pull system. That means each step of the Kanban process pulls tasks for processing depending on their available capacity. In contrast, in a push system, the demand centers push tasks and initiate their starts. This maximum available capacity of a Kanban team, which is responsible for a specific step, corresponds to Work In Progress (WIP) Limit in Kanban. Limiting Work In Progress (WIP) comes from efficient lean manufacturing ideas. Kanban advocates the minimization of work in progress items at every step of the production phase. That enables quicker problem resolution, faster and more optimal stabilization of processes, and lower wastes. Over the years, it has been proven that smaller batch sizes of work enabled by limiting Work In Progress (WIP) made various other benefits possible for Kanban teams such as building ownership of their work, system-thinking, and innovative mindsets. Work In Progress (WIP) limit of Kanban provides two benefits in managing disorder. Focus Of Kanban Team: WIP Limits restrict the number of tasks influenced by altering priorities and demands. That saves Kanban teams from abandoning their ongoing tasks.Improvement Of Kanban Process: A Kanban team cannot finish its work quicker than its slowest step. Therefore WIP Limits can quickly show the Kanban team whether specific steps are bottlenecks or the other steps are overoptimized. This input can be rapidly turned into measures to improve the overall performance of the Kanban process.

Scrum Institute, Kanban Framework Episode #11 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Are Key Kanban Practices? Key Kanban practices introduced in this section are going to guide towards the optimal operations of the Kanban framework. Following six key Kanban practices (core Kanban practices) need to be leveraged to execute the Kanban framework successfully. Visualize Your Workflow With Kanban: You can analyze, improve, and control your Kanban process by continually measuring it, and making it visible to your entire Kanban team and business stakeholders.Limit Work In Progress (WIP) With Kanban: Limit the amount of work in progress at every step of your development and delivery processes. Thus, you continuously generate business value in shorter lead times and cycle times.Make Kanban Policies Explicit: Rules and norms of your Kanban process need to be agreed in consensus, clearly defi ned, and publicized. When all Kanban team members are familiar with explicit principles and policies, and their joint business goals, then they can make decisions to bring your project in the correct direction.Manage Kanban Workflow: Kanban focuses on managing the work processes to make the Kanban workflow robust, reliable, and fast, rather than focusing on keeping people busy.Implement Kanban Feedback Loops: Feedback loops to measure outcomes of the Kanban process (macro-level feedback) and its associated steps (micro-level feedback), which lead to deliverables, will provide the required input for continuous improvement.Improve Kanban Collaboratively, Evolve Kanban Experimentally: The Kanban process suggests a fact-based and collaborative approach in which everyone’s opinion is counted. Kanban team members have room to experiment, make mistakes, assess, and learn from them. They will excel in their process, and finally their business outcomes. Visualize Your Workflow With Kanban Let’s talk about the significance of visual components in our lives. Human beings love visual elements. Our brains capture more information from one single picture than multiple pages of text. Furthermore, we can process visual elements far faster than words. 30% of our brain neurons participate in the task of visual perception. In contrast, only 8% of brain neurons are active for hearing, and 3% of them are functioning for our touching sense. Furthermore, when we look at visual components, our brains are able to process numerous pieces of information concurrently. Our brains can process visual elements around 60,000 times faster than it processes textual elements. Visual data such as images, graphics, illustrations, infographics are a significant relief for our brain in information overload of our personal and business lives. The reason behind much faster and efficient visual processing is pretty simple. Threats in the ancient world were visible things, not memorandums, protocols or other documents. The Kanban framework utilizes the Kanban board to make its workflow visible and transparent. The way the Kanban board was set should enable proper planning, visualization, delivery of work, the continuous improvement of the workflow, and the individual performance of Kanban team members. How You Visualize Your Kanban Workflow Visualization of your workflow and processes can become quite a daunting task. That is especially true if your organization used to tolerate intransparent work among different silos of matrix organizational structure so far. Some people can be quickly frustrated by the number of activities that goes into building your product or service. They may think that it’s not very easy to visualize their workflows in the first place, so they give up. Doing the work, but not being able to visualize it. Go and figure… Nonetheless, the following four steps will help you visualize your workflow and build your first Kanban board. Step 1: Identify the scope of your process you would like to visualize.Step 2: List the steps that get into your process, which creates outcomes such as products and services.Step 3: Transform steps of your process into lanes of your Kanban board.Step 4: Get back to work, experiment with, visualize and improve your Kanban workflow. During this process, bear in mind that your visualization should cover the following items: Acceptance Criteria of business demands coming from the upstream work center before they can be taken into the Kanban workflow.Explicit policies which are similar to Definition of Done’s (DoD). These will guide the Kanban team while their works flow from the left side to the right side of their Kanban board throughout various steps of development and delivery phase.Explicit policies to limit Work In Progress (WIP) Definition of Done (DoD) of Kanban team’s deliverables before they can be dispatched to the down-stream work center.

Scrum Institute, Kanban Framework Episode #10 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Are Key Metrics To Manage A Kanban Workflow? You can only improve what you are focusing on. Key Kanban metrics you choose to assess the performance of your Kanban workflow are not an exception to this critical rule. It is essential that you know the key Kanban metrics to manage your Kanban workflow. So you can enhance the business throughput and reduce the wastes of your Kanban team in this process. Here are some key Kanban metrics you should be continuously monitoring as part of your initiative to improve your Kanban workflow: Team Throughput: The number of Kanban cards the Kanban team delivers in their Kanban workflow in a given unit time interval.Work In Progress (WIP): The number of Kanban cards in work in progress state at different stages of development and delivery process (Kanban workflow).Lead Time: The amount of time a Kanban card spends in Kanban workflow from the moment business stakeholders request it until it is successfully delivered.Cycle Time: The amount of time a Kanban card spends in Kanban workflow from the moment the Kanban team starts working on it until the Kanban team finishes its tasks for the given card. Cycle Time, Work In Progress (WIP), Team Throughput are interrelated by Little’s Law. Little’s Law states that: Cycle Time = Work In Progress (WIP) / Team Throughput Little’s Law guides us to properly administer, set client expectations, and continuously improve the Kanban workflow. Little’s Law shows the correlation between the three key Kanban workflow metrics. Changing one of these metrics will have an impact on the other two metrics. For instance: To accomplish a reduction in cycle time, Work in Progress (WIP) must decrease, or the Team Throughput must increase. Work Item Age:The amount of time a Kanban card in work in progress state spends in the Kanban workfl ow from the moment the Kanban team starts working it until the moment of measurement.Problems (Impediments): The number of Kanban cards in the Kanban workflow that cannot be processed or delivered due to blocking dependencies, planning, or all other types of errors. The excellent point about Kanban metrics is that you can determine the length of your feedback loop, based on how frequently you want to analyze your metrics and make changes in your Kanban workflow. A long feedback loop indicates that your process improvement will be slow. A short feedback loop suggests that your process may not have sufficient time to stabilize between each change. The length of the feedback loop in which you observe your metrics is one of the items you can experiment too.

Scrum Institute, Kanban Framework Episode #9 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is A Kanban Workflow? (Kanban Workflow Definition – Kanban Workflow Meaning) All work a Kanban team performs and delivers from the conception of their product until the end of the product’s life cycle builds the Kanban team’s workflow. And yet, the reliability, repeatability, and improvement of any process are not only based on the actual work delivered. But also they are based on the agreed norms of how the work is performed. (How the work flows.) Kanban Workflow Definition A Kanban workflow defines explicit policies and principles, followed by the Kanban team. Its main objective is to represent the rules and procedures of work while the work is flowing across different stages of its development and delivery cycle. It’s important to understand that the Kanban team cannot be imposed to use a specific workflow defined by their business stakeholders. And yet, Kanban teams should bear in mind expectations from business units in upstream and downstream work centers to contribute the bottom line of their organizations Therefore, the game plan to build and improve a Kanban workflow requires continuous collaboration between Kanban delivery teams and their associated counterparts at surrounding work centers. The Kanban Framework administers, plans, and operates the Kanban workflow by using a Kanban board. Thus, the work in progress (WIP) limits for development and delivery steps offer immediate feedback loops. These feedback loops enable a Kanban team to monitor, address, and follow up on issues of its Kanban workflow.

Scrum Institute, Kanban Framework Episode #8 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is A Kanban Certification? Kanban certification has been granting tremendous advantages to millions of Kanban experts until today. Therefore, there is no reason that you won’t join these skillful men and women who promoted their careers and professional abilities with the help of the Kanban framework. Kanban Certification Definition A Kanban certification is the attestation of your proficiency in the Kanban operations management, as well as in the Kanban software development and delivery framework. Kanban certification recognizes your expressed knowledge and distinguished expertise in the Kanban framework after an official multiplechoice test examination. If you’re still curious, I would love to reassure you that you can no longer envision a flourishing career without holding a Kanban certification. It’sregardless of your position, power, and expertise in knowledge work and information technology ecosystems. You even don’t need to be an IT expert anymore to know what Kanban is, how Kanban works, and get a Kanban certification. Regardless of what you are doing for a living, and regardless you belong to an IT department or not, there is an inherent and undeniable truth. Your duties and acknowledged market power you’ve been offering for your business are reliant on and interrelated to information work, software, Kanban framework and Kanban principles. Moreover, due to the transformation of conventional enterprise types into software as a service (SaaS) forced companies or so-called digitalization journey, it’s no longer a deliberate choice for any trained expert in or outside the IT department to get certified as a Kanban expert. However, it’s a necessity now to get a Kanban certification. What Is Certified Kanban Expert (Kanban-EXP) Certification Program? And Why Is It Important For Your Career? The primary function of a Certified Kanban Expert (Kanban-EXP) is to ensure flawless foundation, adequate and sound development, and constant refinement of Kanban practices in a Kanban organization and its Kanban teams. Hence, the proficiency and viewpoint of all team members in a Kanban system and how well they fit their Kanban teams are essential. These fundamental factors usually determine the maturity level and business throughput of a Kanban organization. Whether you belong to a Kanban team or you cooperate and operate together with other Kanban organizations, you need to have a clear understanding of Kanban. Certified Kanban Expert (Kanban-EXP) Certification Program will teach you how and what makes the Kanban framework far more efficient to work with than many other operational management, software development, and delivery processes. Accordingly, regardless you're an IT, software, technology practitioner, leader, manager or not, every professional at this current digitalization age (when software and everything around it are kings) is highly recommended to become a Certified Kanban Expert (Kanban-EXP). What Is Certified Kanban Project Manager (Kanban-PM) Certification Program? And Why Is It Important For Your Career? Certified Kanban Project Manager (Kanban- PM) is the person accountable for fulfilling the desired and declared project goals. Key responsibilities of a Kanban project manager involve building transparent and achievable project goals and facilitating the development of project requirements. A Kanban project manager also manages the pressure of the project management triangle, which are the cost, the schedule, the scope to accomplish remarkable performance, and quality. A Certified Kanban Project Manager (Kanban- PM) is often a client representative. Kanban project manager needs to discover and aid the implementation of client requirements, based on expectations of the business stakeholders or the client he or she is representing. Kanban project manager is the bridging passage between the Kanban development/Kanban delivery teams and their business sponsors. Thus, a Kanban project manager has a good knowledge of the industry he or she is navigating. That’s essential to understand and arbitrate the expectations, problems, and progress with both the Kanban delivery teams and clients. Kanban project managers should possess the strength to adjust to the various internal procedures of the contracting parties. They form close collaboration with the nominated representatives of both business and technology stakeholders. That’s again essential in assuring that the critical issues related to expenses, plans, deliverables, and quality can be efficiently resolved. So that, the Kanban team can delight the business owner (client) with their throughput. In summary, the title and name Certified Kanban Project Manager (Kanban-PM) describes the person who is given the liability to complete a project. Kanban project managers are persons with full accountability for their projects. They have the required level of authority to deliver the planned project objectives within the project budget, on time, and with the highest possible quality.

Scrum Institute, Kanban Framework Episode #7 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is A Kanban Tool (Kanban Board Tool) for Project Management? A Kanban board tool (Kanban tool) for project management is going to give you a fantastic clarity and transparency of the progress and bottlenecks of your projects. Kanban cards, colors, swimlanes, tags, and due dates will assist you in composing your work on your digital Kanban board software. You will have the ability to analyze and continuously improve your processes to increase business effi ciency and reduce wastes. Below are some of the Kanban board tools for project management. International Scrum Institute does not testify the fit or performance of any of these Kanban tools for your own project and business. However, we can confirm that we have a pleasant experience with Trello mentioned in this list. Asana Boards,Azure DevOps Server (to administer Kanban workflows among distributed teams),CA Technologies Rally (to manage software projects with pull-based lean planning tools),Jira Kanban Boards,Meister Task Kanban Application,Microsoft Planner (Part of Microsoft Office 365),Notion App,Projektron BCS (Kanban board and cards for software development and software maintenance teams),Trello (Kanban board tool and electronic Kanban cards for project management)Tuleap (Open source application for software engineering teams),Twproject (project and program management software based on Kanban).

Scrum Institute, Kanban Framework Episode #6 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is A Kanban System – Kanban Development Methodology? Kanban system (Kanban development methodology) is a framework that intends to implement the fl ow of work (workfl ow) through handling requirements along with available capacity. Furthermore, Kanban development methodology aims to improve the operations of a workflow by removing system-level bottlenecks of the workflow. In a Kanban system, Kanban board and Kanban cards provide Kanban team members and workflow stakeholders, an overview of work progress. As well as a guideline on how the work gets done from its beginning to its end. A Kanban card (work item) is only pulled as much as the work in progress limit (WIP limit) of a Kanban board column allows, instead of a Kanban card is arbitrarily pushed to the next phase of the Kanban system. A Kanban system delivers a graphical process operations system to enable monitoring and increase decision-making capability about individual phases of the workflow. That is especially important for knowledge work and software development, which require ultimate transparency about what works well and what doesn’t, so Kanban teams identify where the bottlenecks are and how to fix them. A Kanban system (Kanban development method) in software development and software engineering is frequently used in combination with other software development and delivery frameworks such as Scrum and DevOps. Kanban systems are designed to manage all types of information works, not only workflows related to software development, software delivery and software teams. Other business functions that frequently use Kanban development methodology are sales, marketing, human resources, recruitment, business strategy, executive leadership, organizational transformation and many others. What Is A Kanban Software – Kanban Board Software? Numerous producers have introduced Kanban software (Kanban board software) systems often described as e-Kanban systems. This Kanban software assists in removing typical issues such as manual entry mistakes, forgotten, and lost Kanban cards. Kanban board software systems are usually incorporated into enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. That allows real-time requirement signaling throughout the supply chain and enhanced transparency of workflow. Information pulled from E-Kanban systems are utilized to enhance stock levels. They enable much better tracking of provider lead and replenishment times. Kanban software is a signaling system that utilizes a mix of innovation to set off the motion of workflow within a productionfacility or information work such as software engineering. Electronic Kanban (e-Kanban) varies from conventional Kanban in using technology by substituting standard components like Kanban cards with barcodes, electronic Kanban cards, and electronic messages like e-mail or electronic information exchange. Kanban software typically utilizes internet infrastructure as a medium to route messages. Furthermore, most of the popular Kanban tools or Kanban board tools for project management do rely on Internet communication too. These Kanban tools or Kanban board tools are primarily managed Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions hosted and maintained by their respective vendors on public cloud computing systems. They enable Kanban teams and their stakeholders to have real-time visibility of their inventory levels or status of their information work. A Kanban board software system typically marks stock with barcodes or tasks with e-Kanban cards. Kanban team members can scan or manually move them at different phases of the production or the delivery of information work to signal use. These scans or manual moves pass on messages to internal/external parties to make sure the restocking of items or bringing new work items into the workflow of information work.

Scrum Institute, Kanban Framework Episode #5 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is A Kanban Board With Kanban Board Example? (Kanban Board Template) Kanban board is among the devices which are utilized to apply the Kanban process. Kanban board can be used to handle operations and matters in professional as well as in personal domains. Kanban boards creatively illustrate operations at its several phases of the Kanban framework. It utilizes cards to instantiate task items and also columns to illustrate each stage of an operational Kanban process. Kanban cards move from left to right on a Kanban board to help teams coordinate their workflow and visualize the progress of their tasks. A Kanban board might be separated into horizontally parallel “swimlanes” to divide various types of works performed by different teams. Kanban boards are also utilized in knowledge works (software engineering, project management, program management) as well as in the manufacturing processes. In the abstract level, a Kanban board has the following columns to demonstrate the phases of a Kanban card (work item). Waiting (To-do)In Progress (Doing)Completed (Done) The naming convention and other columns can be customized based on the stages of a given workflow operated by a Kanban team. More comprehensive Kanban boards can be designed to partition “in progress (doing)” work into numerous other columns to depict the workflow across all units with are interacting with this work. For instance, in a software engineering organization, “in progress” column can be roughly divided into “Analysis”, “Design”, “Development”, “Test” and “Delivery” columns. Kanban boards, depending on the workflow for which they are utilized, can differ substantially. A Kanban Board could visualize: Various Types of Kanban Cards (features, user stories, defects),Extra columns identifying workflow phases,Explicit policies (regulations about how to use the Kanban board, and definition of done of phases),Swimlanes (rows across multiple columns to group user stories by features or defects by products and components). The primary goal is to make an entire workflow visible and understandable to all working participants and stakeholders of the workflow. The Kanban board template depicted on the next page represents a software delivery process on a Kanban board. Let’s pay attention to the following characteristics of this Kanban board example: It highlights the tasks of the software development team including epics and user stories.The values circled below column headings specify the maximum number of Kanban cards (Work In Progress Limit, WIP Limit) that can be simultaneously processed in a given phase.Below certain columns, it specifies explicit policies, which are also known as done rules.It encompasses a Kanban workflow management feature to divide certain columns as “Ready” and “In Progress”. The WIP limit applies to both sub-columns to ensure that the associated teams and workflow stages are not overwhelmed due to excessive number of tasks (Kanban cards) on a single column (phase of workflow).

Scrum Institute, Kanban Framework Episode #4 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Are Kanban Cards With Kanban Card Example? (Kanban Card Template) Kanban cards are an essential element of Kanban. In fact, translated from Japanese, a Kanban means a visual (kan) card (ban). Kanban cards imply the requirement to move products within a production center or to move materials from an external provider into the production facility. Therefore, the Kanban card is a message that signals the depletion of an item, parts, or inventory. When a Kanban card is obtained, the card (Kanban) activates replenishment of that product, part, or stock. So the consumption center drives demand for more production, and the Kanban card signals a request for more items. In summary, Kanban cards help produce a demand-driven system. Supporters of lean movement extensively hold demand-driven systems result in much faster turnarounds in production and end-user delivery. Lower stock levels help companies carry out these systems much more competitive. That enables companies to use their available resources optimally. Most Kanban cards consist of a minimum of the following Kanban card template (Kanban card example), while the specific details included on a Kanban card example can differ from one system to another. Part description,Part / Item number,Ani dentifying bar code or QR code,The number of parts to be ordered, produced or transported,Routing info (associated upstream and downstream processes),Location information,Lead time,Supplier,The accountable individual (mostly a coordinator),The order date,The due date,Type of container,Order of containers (for example, Kanban card 2 of 4). Cards are usually fixed to a container, efficiently turning a bin into a Kanban. In other cases, a Kanban card is temporarily attached to shelves of bins. These Kanban cards (signal cards) are an integral part of a Kanban system to manage inventory. A Kanban card must be treated like a highly regulated item. Losing one can quickly close down a production line and fully interrupt the production until the missing parts are again available.

Scrum Institute, Kanban Framework Episode #3 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Are The Origins Of Kanban? The three systems which historically build the origins of the Kanban framework have one significant common aspect. When it comes to production planning, they all have chosen “pull” modus operandi over “push”. What is “push” modus operandi in production planning? With “push” modus operandi, the supply center keeps on producing and delivering parts regardless of the moment the demand center consumes them. What is “pull” modus operandi in production planning? With “pull” modus operandi, the supply center produces and delivers parts based on requests coming from the demand center. A crucial element of the success with a pushbased production scheduling is the competence of the demand-forecast. So that the supply center produces and delivers parts without causing under- or over-inventory in the demand center. Kanban, on the contrary, establishes a method where the pull comes from the demand center, and products or components are Just-In-Time (JIT) manufactured based on demand. Production, delivery, resupply, and replenishment are all determined based on actual client needs. Although it’s a challenge, done correctly, this approach optimizes the use of resources needed both in supply and demand centers, whereas it makes inventory management almost obsolete. Now let’s discuss the origins of the Kanban framework, the three processes which constructed its foundation Kanban Two-Bin System For Shelf-Stocking “2-bin system” stems from the most basic visual stock replenishment signaling system, an empty box. Factories in the United Kingdom initially set up this process to produce Spitfires throughout the Second World War. Toyota analyzed processes in supermarkets during the 1940s to identify diverse shelfstocking strategies for their own factory floor In a supermarket, consumers typically buy what they require at the needed time with the desired quantities. Furthermore, a supermarket builds its stocks for what it anticipates to sell in a given timeframe. Clients usually only buy what they require since the future supply is ensured. This observation led Toyota to see a process as a client of several preceding processes and to see the other preceding processes as a kind of store. Kanban utilizes the rate of demand to control the rate of production, passing requirements from the consumer up through the series of production and delivery process. In 1953, Toyota applied this mechanism in their main plant factory. Kanban aligns stock levels with real intake. A signal informs a supplier process to produce and provide a brand-new shipment when the consumer process takes in the material. This signal is leveraged during the entire replenishment cycle to bring clarity to both the supplier and customer. Kanban Three-Bin System For Supply Chain Management A “3-bin system” links various departments or various parts of work processes. Sometimes, it even links business to its outside suppliers. A typical 3-bin system should work like this: The factory places one bin where items are manufactured. The shop places another bin where parts and materials are held. And the supplier places one more bin. When the factory has no more parts of a specific type, it sends its empty bin to the shop to be refilled. The shop fills the bin and then dispatches its own freshly emptied bin to the supplier. The supplier then sends a full bin to the store. The bins function as the signal to indicate that downstream processes need more of some parts. They also offer permission to move parts from one place to another. In Kanban, absolutely nothing moves without a demand signal from a demand center. The majority of 3-bin systems also keep Kanban cards (or some other information sheet) in the bins specifying what the bin includes and in what quantity. When one of these bins is leaving its original center to be refilled by another party, cards help process participants to view the role of these bins. Toyota’s Six Rules For Kanban Toyota team has created six significant rules (Toyota's Six Rules for Kanban) which guide Kanban practitioners from the past to today. Each consumer process dispatches demands (bins and Kanban cards) to its supplier processes after it consumes its materials.Each supplier process manufactures and delivers in association with the amount and sequence of incoming demands.Items are neither manufactured nor delivered without a pending demand.The request (Kanban card) related to an item (bin) is always connected to it.Supplier processes must adhere to the highest standards of quality assurance to guarantee that the delivered products are defect-free.Limiting the number of pending demands makes a process more delicate and reveals potential inefficiencies to be addressed.

Scrum Institute, Kanban Framework Episode #2 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is Kanban? (Kanban Definition – Kanban Meaning) Kanban takes its name from the cards that track production within a factory. It’s a scheduling system for lean manufacturing and just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing. Kanban Definition In Japanese, Kanban (看板) means signboard or billboard. Taiichi Ohno(February 29, 1912 – May 28, 1990), an industrial engineer at Toyota, developed Kanban to improve production effectiveness and decrease wastes. Kanban ended up being an efficient framework to support running a production system as a whole and an excellent way to promote improvement. Identification of the lead time and the cycle time of a given process and its associated sub-processes, and incompatibilities among them highlight problem areas. One of the main differences of Kanban compared to other processes is that it explicitly establishes an upper limit to work in progress inventory to prevent overcapacity. Less is more to get results (Remember how the Google landing page looks like). However, as human beings, we are tempted to get trapped with Complexity Bias. Kanban establishes maximum limits on the number of products waiting at supply points. Afterward, the Kanban team identifi es and addresses any inefficiencies in their workflow. Whenever a limit is not honored, this points to an inefficiency to be sorted out and a process improvement potential to be exploited. Therefore, it’s safe to say that the primary goal of a Kanban system is to restrict the accumulation of excess inventory. The purpose of the Kanban team is to eliminate this excess inventory at any point in production. That will lead to better allocation of available resources (human, tools, financial) to increase business throughput and profitability, and to remove wastes, bottlenecks in the processes.

Scrum Institute, Kanban Framework Episode #1 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox Welcome To The Kanban Framework Hi! My name is Yeliz. First of all, thank you very much for getting your copy of The Kanban Framework. I love that you are taking the time to read it. I want to briefly share with you the backstory of why we wanted to write this book for you and how you can get the best use out of it. Within the context of our Kanban training and Kanban certification programs, we did thorough research in the Kanban education space. The conclusion was: We failed to find one single reliable study book, we could sincerely recommend to our students! We surveyed and talked to our successful students who have successfully passed their Kanban certification exams, and we found out a remarkable and yet indisputable piece of information. Almost none of the Kanban books in the market did help them learn Kanban and make a smooth beginning to deploy and profit with the Kanban Framework. They did end up with literally zero return on investment. Both for their professional objectives as individuals and the financial goals of their organizations. A significant number of Kanban books in the marketplace claim that they cover all details of the Kanban process. However, what they are not telling is that: They don’t have a logical, to-the- point, and digestible structure, and time-tested and proven contents. So these books were unable to help our students comprehend and most importantly love Kanban! In summary, to remove this significant impediment in the Kanban learning space, we took the liability to write for you The Kanban Framework and brought it to your service! We are absolutely confident that The Kanban Framework will make you proficient in the Kanban process and its practical use in your career and businesses So you will have an unprecedented opportunity to love Kanban and keep on taking the tangible benefits of being a Kanban professional who knows how Kanban should work. Take some coffee to enjoy and some paper to take your notes, and spend some quiet time to read The Kanban Framework! Afterward, you will have a great understanding of the Kanban domain and be prepared to pass your Kanban certification exams. You will be ready to deliver great products and services to your clients and employers and to build your bright career and future! It already seems to me that you’re a person who is keen on adding new skills to your toolbox. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading these sentences today. I am delighted that you’re giving us your time and attention to learn Kanban. Let me assure you that we’ll never take this responsibility lightly. It’s our duty, obligation, and at the same time, our pleasure to accompany you on your journey to learn Kanban. You can count on me whenever you may need any help. I will be always pleased to assist and serve you! Thank you very much again for your trust in our services and engaging withThe Kanban Framework today! Kanban Organization, International Scrum Institute, Scrum-Institute.Org International Scrum Institute is an independent institute. We help organizations and professionals get certified with worldwide renowned and valid Kanban and Scrum certification programs and prove their competence in the Kanban and Scrum domains. We empower professionals globally to build their careers, and organizations to create and sell their outstanding products and services that their clients will love. Your renowned Kanban and Scrum certification programs have proven their worldwide recognition by being the choice of more than 628,700 Scrum professionals in 143 countries. Before International Scrum Institute was established for you, there used to be pressing challenges for Kanban and Scrum professionals like yourself. You didn’t possess a reasonable alternative to get your Kanban and Scrum certifications and prove your competence in Kanban and Scrum domains. Kanban and Scrum professionals had to pay expensive fees for the one way profit-driven Kanban and Scrum certification programs of other certification entities. Moreover, they had to pay hefty prices for classroom training, recurring certification renewals, and various additional recurring subscriptions and memberships. International Scrum Institute aims to remove these barriers set in front of the Kanban and Scrum professionals in developed and emerging markets. We are here to save you from paying unreasonable fees for Kanban and Scrum classroom training, and Kanban and Scrum certification programs before you certify your knowhow in Kanban and Scrum.b International Scrum Institute provides twelve major online Kanban and Scrum certification programs. These programs have been designed by our consortium of renowned business and people leaders, coaches, mentors, experts, and authorities from all major industries. Here is an overview of our Kanban and Scrum certification programs we have created for you: Certified Kanban Expert (Kanban-EXP)Certified Kanban Project Manager (Kanban-PM)Scrum Master Accredited CertificationScrum Product Owner Accredited CertificationScaled Scrum Expert Accredited CertificationAgile Scrum Leadership (Executive) Accredited CertificationScrum Trainer Accredited CertificationScrum Coach Accredited CertificationScrum Team Member Accredited CertificationScrum Certification for Web DeveloperScrum Certification for Mobile App DeveloperScrum Certification for Java Developer Moreover, feel free to check out the articles specified below to read why we perform and serve you far better than our competitors. Featured on LinkedIn with Hundreds of Likes: Scrum Master Certification Made Economical: Step-by-Step Plan8 Reasons Why International Scrum Institute Serves You Far More Better Than Its Competitors!

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #17 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Are The Next Steps After The Scrum Framework? This Might Surprise You! How to Guarantee Your Position As A Successful Scrum Professional I feel that it’s now my job to inspire you to actually implement and execute what you have learned from this material. Let’s face it: The big, vast IT industry is not going to accommodate you with more opportunities and more business without you taking some serious initial steps. The IT industry most likely doesn’t even know you exist; up until now, you only operated as a small part of it, or you’re just getting started. The government is not going to bail you out on your difficult days, and they certainly are not going to help you to advance and conquer on your career journey. Taking the time to pick up this book and read it suggests that you truly do want to do something different. For this, I acknowledge and congratulate you. Well done to you on getting this book. I applaud you for reading it and even more for finishing it. Now, if you want the world to give you a standing ovation, put lessons in it to work. Interestingly, one of the most effective ways of perfecting these disciplines is to help others attain success and implement these actions themselves. When people with common goals and motivations come together, they tend to learn faster and become a support system for one another. So gather a group of like-minded and highly driven people who refuse to live by the norms of the mediocre. Assemble a study group to read this book and brainstorm it with you. Ask your co-workers, employees and bosses to read this book as a team. Then help one another apply and commit to using the actions, hold one another accountable to these commitments. Follow now International Scrum Institute LinkedIn® Company Page to get connected to other like-minded professionals who can empower and inspire you in your career. Something tells me that you didn’t pick up this book because you are comfortable or satisfied with where you’re in your career. Chances are you want to change or improve your current position. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have finished this book. Therefore, I will be happy to support you on your career journey! Why Should You Be Getting Your Scrum Certifications Today? A Scrum certification is the testimony of your competence in the Scrum software development and delivery process. Scrum certification acknowledges your demonstrated knowledge and outstanding expertise in the Scrum framework after a formal multiple choice test evaluation. Scrum software development process has been offering immense benefits to millions of professionals until today. Therefore, there is no reason that you won't join these accomplished men and women who upgraded their careers and skills with the help of the Scrum framework. If you still wonder, I want to assure you that you can no longer imagine a growing career without possessing a Scrum certification. It's regardless of your role, title, and experience in Information Technology (IT) ecosystem. You even don’t have to be an IT professional anymore to understand what Scrum is, how Scrum works, and get a Scrum certification. Your are a Five-Star Professional! You Must Be Acknowledged and Compensated Accordingly! Whatever you do for a living, regardless you’re part of an IT department or not, there is an essential and indisputable fact. Your tasks and professional business value you’ve been serving for your organization are dependent on and interrelated to IT, software, and agile Scrum process and principles. Moreover, thanks to the shift of traditional business models into software as a service (SaaS) driven businesses or so-called digitalization movement, it’s no longer a voluntary decision for any professional in or outside the IT department to get certified as a Scrum professional. However, it’s a must today to get a Scrum certification. You may be just starting your career, or you may be a seasoned IT professional. That doesn’t play a role. You need to get your Scrum certification. Your role may or may not include people and functional management activities. It doesn’t matter too; you still need to have a Scrum certification. You should learn Scrum software development framework and become an accomplished Scrum Professional today by getting your Scrum certification. The Pros Of Being An Accomplished Scrum Professional It’s now the time to recap. If you didn’t get a chance to read every word in this book, let me break down my thoughts. Here are my thoughts about the pros and cons of getting certified as a Scrum professional. The Pros for Employees, Freelancers, Coaches and TrainersA Scrum certification will be your recognition of competence and up-to-date know-how in the Scrum domain.A Scrum certification will help you outcompete your peer group who do not develop themselves anymore. And remember, they're a lot. It will help you get hired for your dream job as a certified and accomplished Scrum professional.A Scrum certification will broaden your perspective, and it will further open up your mind for continuous learning. It will help you get more responsibilities and fantastic career opportunities.A Scrum certification will provide a brand new toolset with which you can deliver great products and services that your clients and employers would love.The Pros for Organizations and EmployersScrum certifications will reduce costs by improving the efficiency of your teams, activities, and processes.Scrum certifications will help you win projects with your trained and skilled employees that you couldn’t win otherwise.Scrum certifications will improve employee satisfaction and commitment by encouraging them to get trained and develop skills.Scrum certifications will improve the quality of your deliverables, customer satisfaction, and ultimately, the success and profitability of your organization. Things To Remember After You Become An Accomplished Scrum Professional A Scrum certification shouldn’t stop your learning. Don’t forget that getting certified as a scrum professional is just the first step. In the spirit of “inspect and adapt” which you learned from the Scrum framework, it’s still your duty and obligation to experiment, observe, and learn continuously.There is no one size fits all solution for all organizations around the world. The Scrum software development and delivery framework is no exception to this rule. What we observed is that: Most organizations that we’re unable to get the best performance out of the Scrum framework have a common characteristic. These are the organizations that failed to adapt Scrum to their own business and ITecosystems. Therefore, again in the spirit of “inspect and adapt”, don’t see the Scrum framework as a 100% guaranteed recipe for success. Please don’t underestimate your cognitive ability to adapt it to the own dynamics of your business and IT. In fact, as a paid professional, this is what you’re supposed to do to get the best throughput and business results by using the Scrum framework.Scrum didn’t solve all the problems we have in our IT departments. Don’t stop developing yourself with Newly emerging software development and delivery processes such as DevOps. To better understand the known flaws of the Scrum framework and how DevOps handles them, have a look at this top article at a later moment: What Are TOP 6 Differences Between DevOps and Scrum? (DevOps vs Scrum Comparison) In conclusion, a Scrum certification is an excellent way to get started with agile software development and delivery practices. According to a Gartner study “Becoming a Better Scrum Master”published in 2019, until 2023, 92% of companies worldwide, and 96% of companies in the United States will be adopting agile scrum practices. Therefore, there will be no better time other than now for you to Start learning the Scrum framework and,Get yourself certified as a Scrum Professional with very affordable fees of International Scrum Institute. The only remaining question is, when are you going to get started?

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #16 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is A Scrum Release Plan? This Might Surprise You! The goal of a release plan is to visualize highlevel planning for multiple Sprints, usually between three to twelve Sprints, or so-called Product Increments. A release plan becomes the guideline that reflects expectations from a Scrum Team about: Which features will be implemented, In what order and when these features will be implemented. The release plan also serves as a benchmark to monitor and control the progress of a project. A release plan serves as a target for actual deployments of software in IT production systems in two ways: Deployment of “Milestone Deliveries” to create business value for the client before the project is complete. These Milestone Deliveries cover a subset of client requirements agreed by the Scrum Product Owner, client, and business stakeholders,Deployment of Final Delivery, which includes all known demands and feature requests from the client and business stakeholders. Before a release plan is created, the following artifacts and information need to be taken into account: A prioritized and estimated Scrum Product Backlog,The measured velocity of the Scrum Team (The velocity is estimated, or its value should be extrapolated from the past similar projects if the Scrum Team is just forming),Success criteria imposed by clients such as schedule, scope, provided human resources allowed by the project budget). Since a Release Plan is heavily associated with the Product Backlog, the Scrum Product Owner governs and maintains the Release Plans. Depending on the demands and priorities of the clients, a release plan is created to satisfy one of these three goals: Feature-Based Release Planning/li>Date-Based Release PlanningFeature-Based and Date-Based Release Planning (The Most Typical) Feature-Based Release Planning What we know: Velocity of the Scrum Team, Features we want to deliver.What we don’t know: How long do we need to deliver these features? For Feature-Based Release Plans, the sum of user story points of requested features within a release is divided by the team velocity. That is going to reveal the number of Sprints required to complete a Milestone Delivery or Final Delivery of the product. And we make the release plan accordingly. Date-Based Release Planning What we know: Velocity of the Scrum Team, The Date we want to deliver.What we don’t know: What features can we deliver until the deadline? For Date-Based Release Plans, we multiply the team velocity by the number of Sprints we have until the release date. That is going to reveal the estimated total number of user story points the Scrum Team can deliver until the release date. And we make the release plan accordingly. Feature-Based and Date-Based Release Planning What we know: Velocity of the Scrum Team, Features we want to deliver, The Date we want to deliver these features.What we don’t know: Can the Scrum Team deliver the requested features until the given deadline? We multiply the team velocity by the number of Sprints we have until the release date. That is going to reveal the estimated total number of user story points the Scrum Team can deliver until the release date. If this number is larger than the sum of user story points of features within a release, then we’re safe. Otherwise, the velocity of the Scrum Team needs to be extended by adding extra human resources to the team. That may not be a viable option as the Scrum team could already possess 9 people, which is the upper limit of an ideal size of a Scrum Team. Then some user stories of the project need to be delivered by another Scrum Team, which is going to work with the original Scrum Team in parallel. Similar to a Scrum Product Backlog, a Release Plan is not a static plan. It will change during the whole project while we know more about the project. New, removed, modified user stories, and the respective changes of their estimates will influence the release plans as well. Therefore, the release plan should be revisited and refreshed at regular intervals.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #15 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is Multi-Team Coordination And Planning? This Might Surprise You! Scrum of Scrum After having seen the last chapter of this course, the next logical question in your mind could be how you do coordinate those different Scrum Teams. So they do work together efficiently. That’s a fair question, and we have attempted to cover this answer too. Scrum of Scrum Meetings Scrum of Scrum Meetings resemble Daily Scrum Meetings. And yet, here during Scrum of Scrum Meetings, the focus is not the work of individual Scrum Team members, but the Scrum Teams themselves. Scrum of Scrum Meetings do take place every day, and they are limited (timeboxed) to 15 minutes too. And yet depending on the complexity of the project, especially during its early stages while Scrum Teams are just forming, these meetings can take 30 to 60 minutes. That’s totally fine as well. Common Sprint Review Meetings Common Sprint Review Meetings with the participation of all Scrum Teams are not mandatory, but they could be very beneficial. Note that Common Sprint Review Meetings do not replace Sprint Review Meetings the Scrum Team conduct locally. What did the team do yesterday?What is the team planning to do today?Are there any impediments to hinder or slow down the progress of the team? These answers should obviously cover the user stories and interdependencies, which impact other teams too. The Chief Scrum Product Owner and the Lead Scrum Master can jointly moderate Scrum of Scrum Master meetings.Alternatively, one of them can take over the moderation duty of these meetings, or they can choose to rotate this duty among themselves as well. Common Sprint Review Meetings Common Sprint Review Meetings with the participation of all Scrum Teams are not mandatory, but they could be very beneficial. Note that Common Sprint Review Meetings do not replace Sprint Review Meetings the Scrum Team conduct locally. The participants of Common Sprint Review Meetings are the delegates from Scrum Teams and/or their respective Scrum Product Owners. The Scrum Teams can also rotate their delegates based on their preferences. The Lead (Primary) Scrum Master carries the responsibility of moderating a Common Sprint Review Meeting. Common Sprint Review Meetings enable all Scrum Teams to demonstrate their Shippable Product Increments to the Chief Scrum Product Owner and all other Scrum Product Owners. In this way, the Common Sprint Review Meetings fulfill two purposes: All Scrum Teams are now aligned about the current status of the overall project.All Scrum Teams collect feedback for their work, and they have the chance now to take this feedback into account, while they do their upcoming Sprint Planning Meetings. Common Sprint Retrospectives Similar to Common Sprint Review Meetings, Common Sprint Retrospective Meetings are not mandatory, but they could be very beneficial. Note that Common Sprint Retrospective Meetings do not replace Sprint Respective Meetings the Scrum Team conduct locally. The participants of Common Sprint Retrospective Meetings are the delegates from Scrum Teams. The Scrum Teams can choose to rotate their delegates based on their discretion. Common Sprint Retrospective Meetings are led by the Lead (Primary) Scrum Master. These meetings aim to find out and act on improvement potentials about how the larger Scrum project organization uses the Scrum Framework. All issues which require the attention and collaboration of multiple Scrum Teams to resolve should be highlighted in these meetings. Their paths towards resolution need to be planned, scheduled, and followed-up. Multi-Team Planning: The Global Scrum Product Backlog When working with multiple teams, it is essential to manage a Global Scrum Product Backlog, which contains the user stories of all Scrum Teams. The Chief Scrum Product Owner could govern the Global Scrum Product Backlog. Yet, its contents are maintained by all Scrum Product Owners. Team-Specific Backlogs When necessary, the user stories from the Global Scrum Product Backlog can be broken down into more team-specific user stories. These more detailed user stories are maintained in a Local Scrum Product Backlog. References 99 from Local Scrum Product Backlog to Global Scrum Product Backlog should be present. These references will help the Scrum Teams to see what roles their user stories play in the bigger picture of their project, and what kind of client value they’re delivering. Sprint Scheduling In a distributed Scrum project environment, there are two options for how you can choose to synchronize the work of different Scrum Teams. Synchronous SprintsAsynchronous Sprints The first option is to use Synchronous Sprints. With Synchronous Sprints, all teams start and end their Sprints on the same day. Synchronous Sprints are usually the preferred approach since they make communication and coordination of the Scrum Team relatively easier. Synchronous Sprints Another option is to use Asynchronous Sprints. With this option, the Sprints do not start and end on the same day.Using Asynchronous Sprints has the advantage that not all Scrum Rituals of individual Scrum Teams must take place on the same day. So it makes for the Chief Scrum Product Owner and other Scrum Product Owners possible to participate Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective Events of other Scrum Teams and support them when they’re asked to do so. When one team provides services to other teams, asynchronous Sprints bring an additional advantage. Asynchronous Sprints Here is a great scenario to clarify this, which was depicted on the above sketch: The work of TeamA (Supplier Team) needs to be integrated into the deliverables of Team-B (Master Team). With the help of Asynchronous Sprints, Team-A can close its Sprint before the Team-B does. So, Team-B (Master Team) can pick the deliverables from Team-A (Supplier Team) and integrate them into their work before they close their own Sprint. Effort Estimations All Scrum Teams within the distributed Scrum Project Environment need to use the same unit (Fibonacci Numbers or Shirt Sizes, etc.) to conduct their estimates. Similarly, the Global Scrum Product Backlog should adhere to this agreed unit of effort estimations too Special attention needs to be paid for the estimates of Component Teams. Components Teams do usually provide services for the user stories of Feature Teams. Therefore, they should be getting the necessary support and clarifications during their own Sprint Planning Meetings and estimations.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #14 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox How To Scale The Scrum Framework (Distributed & Large Scrum Projects)? This Might Surprise You! The Scrum Framework – as described so far – works best for a single Scrum Team in one location. However, in reality, a singular Scrum Team often cannot implement a project entirely, or the team members have to spread over multiple locations. As a consequence, the number of teams has to increase with various distributed teams. In many instances, we have also been observing that those teams are distributed in geographically distant locations or continents. There are numerous reasons which motivate organizations to distribute their teams across different locations: Technical Reasons: Some knowhow to build separate components of the software are not locally available in the headquarters, Expertise Reasons: Some capabilities related to the execution of different software engineering activities are not locally available. For instance, test automation, user interface design, or integration of in-house software to the software of other vendors can require experts outside the headquarters, Size-related Reasons: The project takes more people on board to deliver it to its clients in a predefined timeline. If this is the case, then the project organization will need more members than it can conceivably fit one single Scrum Team. So the Scrum Team has to be distributed,Business-related Reasons: Use of human resources from lower-cost locations or enabling the continuity of work by using engineers from different time-zones could build a good business case. As communication is an integral part of the Scrum Framework, all Scrum Team members should pay attention to overcome the challenges to deal with working within a distributed project environment. Furthermore, all team members should have access to communication tools, including audio/video conferencing and screen sharing tools. These commonly used project management tools support teams to enable healthy and continuous communication. Those can include product backlogs, sprint backlogs, incident lists, knowledge/ news sharing tools, and so on. Project Organization: Multiple Teams The simplest way of expanding the Scrum Framework while working in a larger-scale project setup is to increase the number of teams in the same location. If multiple teams need to work together to implement a project, it is best to grow the number of teams progressively. What does this mean to you? Multiple Teams in a Single Location In most organizations, progressive growth is more manageable than launching ten different new teams in one go. The best practice is to start with a single Scrum Team. After a few successful Sprints, one or two additional Scrum Teams can join the project. Once you ensure that these multiple Scrum Teams work together well, you can keep on adding further Scrum Teams to your distributed project organization. Increasing the Number of Teams There are two typical ways of creating new Scrum Teams:You split an existing Scrum Team into multiple teams and add new Scrum Team members where and when necessary,You construct a new Scrum Team from completely different engineers who haven’t involved the project so far. Splitting an existing Scrum team has the advantage of leveraging the Scrum Team members who are already knowledgeable and who have already experienced with the ongoing project. Therefore, those new teams are usually at least at some degree productive as soon as they’re formed. The major drawback of this scenario is that the existing and fully functional Scrum Team has now been split into two teams. That could always cause some issues with the motivation of Scrum Team members. Especially if those changes are happening without an in advance announcement and justification from senior leadership, and when the team members are mentally and technically unprepared. When adding completely new teams, these already existing teams can continue with their Sprints without any interruption and extra integration effort. However, it will take longer to build up the necessary know-how and momentum to ramp-up the entirely newly formed Scrum teams. Independent from the decision on how you add new Scrum Teams to your organization bear in mind the following principles: Start with a small number of Scrum teams,Increase the number of teams gradually,Ensure the continuity of work and smooth delivery of software and business value during the times of change and growth,If there’re significant problems that hinder productivity and continuity of work, first focus on fixing them rather than the expansion with new Scrum Teams. Project Organization: Distributed Teams The major complexity of multiple teams manifests itself when the new Scrum Teams have to be distributed over various locations. Communication barriers between people, coordination difficulties of work, and misunderstandings of joint project norms across teams are only a few of many when it comes to mentioning this complexity. Multiple Teams in Multiple Locations The consequences of not addressing these challenges are severe. Companies have to count billions of dollars of wasted IT budget because of the lack of their skills in Organizational Leadership andScaled Scrum Expertise. There are four critical suggestions for you to cope with these challenges: You ensure that new Scrum Team members are trained in the Scrum Framework as a Scaled Scrum Expert,You ensure that new Scrum Team members are introduced to the project adequately, so they have a proper understanding of what they’re serving for. Not only technically but also from a professional business value point of view, so they can make decisions in their work to increase the value of their contribution,You ensure that the project norms are established. Similar to a single Scrum Team, which has its norms of how to communicate, how to plan, how to get the work done, a multiple project team organization should have its higher-level norms too. So these teams can communicate, plan, operate, solve problems, and deliver client and business value together.You ensure that the new team members do at least temporarily work together with the experienced project members. That could require remote site visits and on-the-job training. That’s totally fine and even desired. Thanks to this approach, the knowhow can be smoothly transferred, and the two-ways and personal dialog between people in different teams and locations can be established. Virtual Teams Another option of a distributed Scrum Team is having its members spread over multiple locations. Such a team is called a “Virtual Team”. The main challenge here is to ensure flawless communication among the team members. Scrum Team members must still need to conduct all Scrum Rituals (Scrum Events) to coordinate their work, but now they have to do this while not all of them are present in the same room. Virtual Teams Scrum Team members co-located in the same location should still work together in the same room. And yet, they now have to rely more on the use of collaboration and communication tools. They can join the Scrum Events from the same meeting room to connect to the other half of the virtual team via video conferencing technologies. Scrum Product Owner Team As we have covered many times in this material so far, regular communication between the Scrum Product Owner and the Scrum Team is crucial for the successful delivery of a project. We need to ensure that the Scrum Product Owner is always available to Scrum Teams located in different locations. Therefore, it is often necessary to have multiple Scrum Product Owners working together. Ideally, there is one dedicated Scrum Product Owner for each team. The Scrum Product Owners should then build a dedicated “Scrum Product Owner Team” to work together effectively. One of the Scrum Product Owners should be assigned to the role of the “Chief Scrum Product Owner”. He or she is responsible for ensuring that: The correct product is built to satisfy the demands of its client,All Scrum Product Owners collaborate efficiently, and they enable their teams to build the business and technical value for their clients. Since the Scrum Product Owner Team is responsible for the complete requirement engineering, it is beneficial to have other competencies and stakeholders in this team. Those can include the representatives of the business case, relevant stakeholders, enterprise architects, and technology architects. All Scrum Product Owners should work within a single large Scrum Product Backlog containing all stories relevant for the project. Each Scrum Team is responsible for delivering some of these user stories. And yet there will be still instances of specific user stories that require the attention and deliverables from multiple Scrum teams. Component vs Feature Teams When distributing work among different teams, we can make the teams accountable for specific software components or features. That is why we call them “Component Team” or “Feature Team.” Component Teams When using Component Teams, each team is only responsible for the implementation of dedicated components from the overall system. To finish a user story, it is usually necessary to split the user stories into smaller pieces to implement them within a single component. The dependencies between the components of these Component Teams make continuous integration an inevitable part of successful deliveries. Scrum Product Owner Team Thus, a feature cannot be usually delivered within a Sprint because its implementation depends on the deliverables from user stories of other teams. That results in increasing batch sizes and lead times of ongoing, not yet integrated work. That doesn’t sound so good, because Scrum Teams should target delivering shippable software increment in smaller batch sizes and shorter lead times. The advantage of component teams is that they make it easier to focus on and build expertise about architectural and design details of particular components. That could be massively beneficial for components that require discovery and innovation. On the other hand, the members of component teams do only specialize in individual components of the whole system. They could lose their bird-eye view and business necessity of features. Keep in mind that our clients do not compensate us to deliver components, but features with which they will execute their businesses. Without this relentless focus on features, overall optimization, and integration of software might take extra time. Since decisions of component teams tend to optimize single components, those decisions can construct invisible bottlenecks for the success and performance of the overall solution. Component Teams Feature Teams Feature teams are fully responsible for the implementation of user stories as they’re specified within the Product Backlog.The teams do no longer need to be divided for various components. Each Feature Team is responsible for delivering a fully-functional feature and a business value associated with this feature. Feature Teams Members of feature teams possess cross functional skills. They act as autonomous as it is possible to deliver fast. The advantage of feature teams is that the team maintains the system-knowledge, and this makes it easier for them to integrate their features with the rest of the system. However, for feature teams, it may become more challenging to build sufficient know-how about components. Furthermore, bringing up an autonomous feature team that can deliver fast and independently takes time as building an interdisciplinary functional team is not that easy. And yet, these are the high-performer teams which get the job done in most organizations, probably including yours. How Do We Choose Component Teams vs Feature Teams? In practice, most of the large organizations use both dedicated Component Teams and Feature teams too. Component and Feature Teams Team C, on the chart, is a Component Team. It provides planned and on-demand infrastructure services to other teams that function as Feature Teams. Team C does not directly implement end-to-end user stories per se. They deliver the requirements of the user stories committed by the Feature Teams. That allows the minimization of the number of qualified people in Feature Teams with the know-how of those components. The Scrum Master In The Distributed Project Environment In a distributed project environment, the role of the Scrum Master is even more essential. In those project configurations: There will be extra effort required to align the teams on the values of the Scrum Framework,It will take longer to establish individual team and project norms (standards) which influences numerous teams,Last but not least, there will be many impediments due to the increased number of dependencies between teams and their deliverables. One important rule to bear in mind that the Scrum Master should physically locate where his or her team is. Otherwise, it will be almost impossible for the Scrum Master: To remove the impediments for his team,To Establish their norms, andTo help them to improve their use of the Scrum Framework. The best practice is to have a Lead (Primary) Scrum Master to guide the overall use of the Scrum Framework across multiple teams. In other unit Scrum teams, which form the larger Scrum organization, someone should be acting as a local Scrum Master too.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #13 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is A Sprint Planning Meeting? This Might Surprise You! During the Sprint Planning Meeting, the Scrum Team builds a viable Sprint Backlog, which determines the user stories and tasks the team is going to implement until the end of this Sprint (Product Increment). A Sprint Planning Meeting constitutes two parts, namely the WHAT-Meeting, and the HOW-Meeting. As those names imply, the WHAT-Meeting focuses on the scope of a Sprint, whereas the HOW-Meeting focuses on how this scope will be implemented. During Sprint Planning Meetings, the presence of the Scrum Product Owner is mandatory. So she can answer questions from the Scrum Team and bring clarifications for the requirements and their acceptance criteria. Stakeholders such as end-users or line managers can join Sprint Planning Meetings as view-only audiences. They’re not allowed to influence the flow of the Sprint Planning Meeting. The Sprint Goal The Scrum Product Owner defines the Sprint Goal. It is a concise and realistic description of what the Sprint will attempt to achieve for business, end-users, and IT systems. The Team Capacity The total capacity of the Scrum Team might change from Sprint to Sprint. To make realistic commitments, the Scrum Team needs to know its capacity for the upcoming Sprint. The team needs to take vacations, public holidays, time spent on Scrum Rituals, and a small contingency for unforeseen issues into account to propose a reasonable capacity. The WHAT-Meeting A Sprint Planning Meeting starts with a WHAT-Meeting. It requires some preparation: The Scrum Product Owner defines the Sprint Goal.Based on this goal, the Scrum Product Owner chooses the candidate user stories for the Sprint from the Scrum Product Backlog.These user stories are edited and broken into smaller user stories when necessary so that they can be processed within one Sprint.The user stories are estimated and prioritized.The Scrum Team plans its capacity for the upcoming Sprint. The duties of various Scrum roles during the course of the WHAT-Meeting part of Sprint Planning Meetings are the following: The Product Owner introduces the Sprint goal and her preselection of requirements, which should go into the product increment.The Scrum Team identifies the required tasks and their estimations. It’s the role of the Scrum Team to decide which and how many requirements preselected by the product owner they can confidently deliver in this Sprint.The Scrum Master moderates the meeting. She ensures that the self-organization and autonomous decision-making capability of the Scrum Team remain intact. The HOW-Meeting The goal of HOW-Meeting is to fill the Sprint Backlog by identifying the concrete tasks needed to implement committed user stories for the Sprint. These tasks usually (but not limited to) include activities such as analysis, design, development, testing, software build packaging, and documentation. The HOW-Meeting can be done in a separate session after the WHAT-Meeting, or it may follow the WHAT-Meeting without a pause. After identifying the tasks to be completed, the Scrum Team estimates these tasks. The unit for this estimation can be person-hours. Based on these estimates, the team has now its baseline about how long each user story will take them to deliver. What Is A Daily Scrum/Stand-Up Meeting? This Might Surprise You! The Daily Scrum Meeting is a maximum of 15 minutes meeting.These meetings take place every working at the same time in the same place. It’s best to conduct Daily Scrum Meetings with direct access to the Sprint Backlog and Sprint Burndown Chart. So the Scrum Team can direct the Daily Scrum Meeting based on the facts and progress which are visible to everyone in the team. Daily Scrum Meeting aims to support the self-organization of the Scrum Team and identify impediments systematically. All members of the Scrum Team, the Scrum Master and the Scrum Product Owner need to join Daily Scrums. Other stakeholders can also join these meetings, but only as a view-only audience. Daily Scrum Meetings are structured in the following way. Every member of the Scrum Team answers three questions. Daily Scrum Meeting – Question #1: What activities have I performed since the last Daily Scrum Meeting? Daily Scrum Meeting – Question #2: What activities am I planning to perform until the next Daily Scrum Meeting? What is my action plan? Daily Scrum Meeting – Question #3: Did I encounter or am I expecting any impediment which may slow down or block the progress of my work? The Scrum Master has to moderate Daily Scrum Meetings. She needs to ensure disciplined and fast-pacing progress so that all team members can answer these three questions in at most 15 minutes. The goal of Daily Scrum Meetings does not include to give time-consuming decisions or solve problems. On the other hand, no issues or concerns from any Scrum Team member should be ignored or undermined due to the time constraint of the Daily Scrum Meeting. Concerns associated with specific user stories must be clearly articulated, discussed, and resolved after the meeting with the Scrum Team members related to these user stories. To align on decisions and solve problems, the Scrum team can organize separate on demand basis meetings. These separate meetings to focus on decisions or issues take usually place subsequently after Daily Scrum Meetings. The Scrum Master documents the identified impediments and its dates in a separate log, flip chart or report which is accessible to the team. We find it very beneficial to quickly update the status of all known impediments at the very end of Daily Scrum Meetings. What Is A Sprint Review Meeting? This Might Surprise You! The Sprint Review Meeting happens at the end of the Sprint.Regardless of the duration of the Sprint, it usually takes one to two hours. Depending on the type of software and available infrastructure, the Sprint Review Meetings take place in a meeting room, in a lab or in the room of the Scrum team. The goal of the Sprint Review Meeting is to review the shippable product increment built during the Sprint and bring transparency to the product development process. The Scrum Team members do not need to prepare a Powerpoint or Keynote presentation to show in the Sprint Review Meetings. They should instead spend their energy on the successful completion and demonstration of the Sprint outcome, which we call the shippable product increment. The Scrum team demonstrates its work results. The Product Owner controls whether the Scrum team delivered the requirements they had committed during the Sprint Planned Meeting accurately or not. The Sprint Review Meeting enables the Product Owner to inspect the current status of the product and adapt the goals of the subsequent Sprint. Therefore, Sprint Review Meetings are another way of formal and practical application of “inspect and adapt”. Participants of the Sprint Review Meeting are the Scrum Team, the Scrum Product Owner, the Scrum Master. Optionally all other stakeholders such as end-users, clients, business representatives can join Sprint Review Meetings. In Sprint Review Meetings, everyone is allowed to deliver their feedback about the demonstrated product increment. In this way, the Scrum team has the opportunity to get unfiltered and direct input from stakeholders for whom they’re building the software. What Is A Sprint Retrospective Meeting? This Might Surprise You! The goal of the Sprint Retrospective Meetings is to improve the teamwork of Scrum Team members and the application of the Scrum process. The Sprint Retrospective Meeting happens directly after the Sprint Review Meeting, and it closes the Sprint. Therefore, Sprint Retrospective Meetings lead to an increase in productivity, the performance of Scrum Team members, and the quality of engineered software. The Sprint Retrospective is an integral part of the “inspect and adapt” process. Without this meeting, the Scrum Team will never be able to improve its overall throughput, and they cannot focus on the improvement of team performance. Remember this: What you focus on is what becomes better! A Sprint Retrospective Meeting is virtually a mini postmortem to define improvement potentials and remove process-related obstacles. Some examples of such improvement potentials that we frequently see in our project are: Adoption of agile software development practices such as extreme programming (XP) or test-driven development (TDD), Identification of new team norms and principles, orIncreased availability of the Scrum Product Owner. Without exception, the Scrum team conducts Sprint Retrospective Meetings at the end of every Sprint. Only in this way, these meetings enable the Scrum Team to systematically adapt and improve their use of the Scrum process to the specifics of their project. What Is A Scrum Grooming (Backlog Refinement) Meeting? This Might Surprise You! Scrum Backlog Refinement (Grooming) Meetings aim to keep the Product Backlog up to date. So the Product Backlog reflects the best know-how and understanding of the Scrum team about the ongoing Scrum project. Scrum Backlog Refinement meetings can happen on-demand or scheduled basis up to two times a week, 30 minutes each session. The Scrum Team, the Scrum Product Owner, and the Scrum Master participate in these meetings. During Scrum Backlog Refinement (Grooming) meetings, the participants fine-tune the Product Backlog with the following actions: Add new user stories based on newly discovered requirements.Remove user stories which are no longer required for the product.Fine-tune estimates of user stories.Update priorities of user stories.Split giant user stories into digestible smaller user stories, and prioritize them accordingly. Here are our other suggestions to improve the outcomes of Backlog Refinement Meetings: Ensure Cross Team Participation, which means you identify the dependencies as early as it is possible, Size User Stories Correctly, which means all user stories can result in a shippable product increment within one single Sprint,Prioritize User Stories, which means you deliver immediate value to end-users, enable quick wins, and make them happy,Estimate Like a Pro, which means you obtain actionable inputs for reliable release planning,Identify Dependencies, which means you pull required teams and resources on board to make your project a success,Uncover Risks, which means you avoid tedious surprises during the later stages of your project.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #12 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is A Scrum Burndown? This Might Surprise You! The “Scrum Burndown Chart” is a visual measurement tool that shows the completed work per Sprint against the projected rate of completion for the current project release. Its purpose is to enable the Scrum Product Owner, the Scrum Team, and other stakeholders to control the progress of the project. So the Scrum Team achieves to deliver the requested software solution within the desired timeline. Simple Scrum Burndown Chart The speed/rate of progress of a Scrum Team is called “Velocity”. It expresses the total number of story points completed that the Scrum Team delivers per Sprint (Iteration). An essential rule to assess and calculate the Velocity is that; Only entirely completed user stories that precisely fulfill their Definition of Done (DoD) are counted. The velocity calculation shouldn’t take partially completed user stories into account. (For instance, coding of a user story is done, but its tests are still missing) Only a few Sprints after a new Scrum Team is formed, the Velocity of the team can be reliably calculated. That helps the Scrum Product Owner to predict the throughput of the Scrum Team better, and he or she can foresee what user stories the Scrum Team can deliver in a given Sprint. That would enable the Scrum Product Owner to plan software releases more accurately, with less surprises towards business clients and end-users. As a simple example: Let’s assume the Velocity of your Scrum Team is 50 story points per Sprint. And the total amount of remaining work has been estimated as 300 story points. Then you can predict that you need 6 Sprints to deliver all of the remaining user stories from the Product Backlog. However, in reality, the user stories in the Scrum Product Backlog will change over the course of the project. New stories are added, and other stories are modified or even deleted. In the Simple Burndown Chart, the Velocity of the Scrum Team and the change of the scope cannot be visualized accurately. To increase this lost accuracy and visibility, Scrum Teams use another type of diagram, which we call “Extended Burndown Chart”. Extended Burndown Chart uses a bar chart instead of a line diagram. The size of each bar represents the total number of remaining user stories at the beginning of each sprint. The Velocity of the Scrum Team is subtracted from the top bar, while changes of the Product Backlog are presented at the bottom of the bar. Extended Burndown Chart Separating Velocity and Scope Changes To get even more accurate results with the Burndown Chart, we can also take the rate of changes in total work into account. We call this more precise model “Extended Burndown Chart With Prediction”. However, we have to be careful when using this model. The magnitude of changes in the Product Backlog will be relatively higher at the beginning. And yet, the rate of changes will usually drop, and they approach zero towards the end of the project. What Is A Scrum Burndown Report? This Might Surprise You! The Sprint Burndown Chart (Sprint Burndown Report) visualizes the progress within the Sprint towards reaching the Sprint goal. It enables transparency and actionable progress data about the actual performance (burndown rate) of the Scrum Team. That allows the Scrum Product Owner and the Scrum Team to easily monitor how the Sprint is going. Thanks to this overview delivered by the Sprint Burndown Chart, the team can predict if the Sprint goal can be accomplished until the end of the Sprint on time. Otherwise, the Scrum Master and the Scrum Team should consider and implement other measures to speed-up the execution of the remaining tasks and user stories in the Sprint Backlog. In the Sprint Burndown Chart, the initial Sprint Backlog defines the start-point for the remaining efforts. Every day the remaining effort which needs to be completed until the end of the Sprint is summed up, and it’s logged on this graph. Sprint Burndown Report/Chart It's worthwhile to remember that; While a new Scrum team is forming, the performance is often not as good as how the ideal burndown rate envisioned it. That usually happens due to wrong estimates or unforeseen impediments that have to be removed to bring the Scrum Team on full speed.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #11 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is The Scrum Product Backlog? This Might Surprise You! Product Backlog (Scrum Backlog) or Scrum Product Backlog is the central element to manage all of the known requirements of a Scrum Project. It consists of all customer requirements and work results that are needed to execute and finish a successful project. As requirements, you count functional and non-functional requirements and other features related to user experience and user interface design. The Product Backlog contains feature requests and their high-level user stories. These can also include pre-requisite or complementary project requirements such as building test and development environments. Moreover, other user stories required to resolve known bugs or reduce technical debt or improve certain software features have also their places in the Product Backlog as well. Every Scrum Project has its Product Backlog. The Scrum Product Owner is responsible for the creation, maintenance, and fine-tuning of a Product Backlog. The Product Backlog doesn’t and shouldn’t answer the question of how these requirements will be developed and delivered. That’s the duty of the Scrum Team. The Scrum Team decides and documents the required tasks to address these requirements in Sprint Backlogs. Note that Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog are physically separate entities although entries in the Product Backlog drive the contents of the Sprint Backlog. The owner of the Scrum Product Backlog is the Scrum Product Owner. The Scrum Master, the Scrum Team, and other Stakeholders contribute it to build a broader list of user stories to bring the product to success. Working with a Scrum Product Backlog does not mean that the Scrum Team is not allowed to create and use other artifacts to manage work. Examples for additional artifacts could be a summary of the various user roles, workflow descriptions, user interface guidelines, storyboards, or user interface prototypes. However, note that these artifacts do not replace the Scrum Product Backlog but complement and detail its contents. he Product Backlog is a living document. Similar to how the software incrementally improves, the Product Backlog grows in time as well. The Scrum framework doesn’t require a separate change management process per se. The Scrum Product Owner creates the first versions of the Product Backlog based on his best initial understanding of the product. While the Scrum Product Owner closely observes how the product emerges from sprint to sprint and while the knowledge about client requirements augments, he or she adds, removes and fine-tines requirements in the Product Backlog. The Scrum Product Owner prioritizes requirements in the Product Backlog. The more priority an element in the Product Backlog has, the more details it should contain. So the Scrum Team can easily make sense of these high priority requirements and create the required tasks to build them. Furthermore, by using story points, the Scrum Team regularly estimates the requirements in the Product Backlog. These estimations should be fine-tuned and improved for high-priority user stories to make them ready for Sprint Planning Meetings. Each Scrum Product Backlog has specific attributes that differentiate it from a simple to-do list: A user story in the Scrum Product Backlog always add a business or technical value to its client, business owner and end-users, All user stories in the Scrum Product Backlog are prioritized and ordered from highest to lowest priority, The level of details stored in a user story depends on its position within the Scrum Product Backlog, User stories are estimated,Scrum Product Backlog is a living document,There are no action items or low-level tasks in the Scrum Product Backlog. User Stories Add Value To Client, Business, and Systems Each user story in the Scrum Product Backlog must offer some client value. User stories without any client value are a pure waste of resources, and they should be eliminated. The Scrum Product Backlog can include user stories for: The specification of functional and nonfunctional requirements,The summary of high-level break-down of the work necessary to launch the software product, Setting up non-production development and demonstration environments,Remediating defects. Example Scrum Product Backlog Some tasks may not add direct value to the functionality of software system and business clients. Nevertheless, they should add value by increasing quality, reducing technical debt, and increasing maintainability of the product during the long run. Product Backlog Is A Living Document The Scrum Product Backlog is a living document. It changes and evolves throughout the entire course of a project. If needed, new user stories are added, existing user stories may be altered, defined in more detail, or even deleted. Requirements of Scrum projects are no longer frozen early on like we used to have them with the Waterfall Methodology. Instead, the final set of requirements within the Scrum Product Backlog are developed iteratively, together with the emerging software increments.That is different from traditional requirements engineering. Still, this new way of handling client requirements allows the Scrum Team to maximize client value and minimize waste of resources. Different Level Of Details The requirements in the Scrum Product Backlog can have varying depths with their granularities. Only those requirements that will be implemented during the next few Sprints should be defined with greater detail. All other user stories should remain coarse-grained; they should be only processed “just in time” before the Scrum Team needs to know more about them. It does not make sense to invest time and resources into the specification of these requirements, as some of these requirements may change or disappear until they are needed for implementation. “Just in time” handling of requirements is one of the most excellent benefits the Scrum Framework offers to deal with “unknown unknowns” in your projects. No Low-Level tasks In The Product Backlog The Scrum Product Backlog should not contain detailed task break-down of user stories. The Scrum Product Owner defines the requirements together with the business clients and stakeholders before he or she brings them to the Backlog Refinement or Sprint Planning Meetings. Detailed task break-down and distribution of these tasks among the Scrum Team Members are the responsibility of the Scrum Team. The Scrum Product Backlog Is Ordered Based On Priority All user stories are prioritized, and the Scrum Product Backlog is ordered based on the priority of user stories (from highest to lowest). The Scrum Product Owner performs the prioritization with the support of the Scrum Team. During this prioritization exercise, the added value created for the business of the client, costs, risks, and dependencies are the most common factors which are into account by the team. Thanks to this prioritization, the Scrum Product Owner can decide what the Scrum Team should subsequently build and deliver. All User Stories Are Estimated All user stories within the Scrum Product Backlog have to be estimated according to the agreed norm of story point units such as Fibonacci number or S/M/L/XL/XXL, etc. More about this comes later in this material. These estimations then impact the capacity planning of Sprints, contents of Sprint Backlog, and release plans. Working With The Backlog The Scrum Product Backlog needs regular care and attention. It needs to be carefully managed because it’s the source of truth to understand what your software product is all about. At the beginning of a project, it’s filled with a lot of high-level stories that may or may not be highly relevant to contribute to the success of the project. While the project progresses from one Sprint to another, the Scrum Product Owner and the team learn more about the project. Subsequently, the contents of the Scrum Product Backlog will become perfectly reasonable to reflect your product better. After this initial setup, the Scrum Product Backlog has to be continuously maintained. The maintenance of the Scrum Product Backlog stands for: As new requirements are discovered, they are described and added. Existing requirements can be changed or removed as appropriate,Ordering (Prioritizing) the Scrum Product Backlog. The most important (highest priority) user stories are moved to the top,Preparing the high-priority user stories for the upcoming Sprint Planning Meetings (usually during Backlog Refinement Meetings), (Re-)Estimating the user stories in the Scrum Product Backlog (usually during Backlog Refinement Meetings). The Scrum Product Owner is responsible for making sure that the Scrum Product Backlog is always in good shape. And yet maintaining the Scrum Product Backlog is a collaborative process. A reasonable capacity of the Scrum Team members should be reserved for managing the Scrum Product Backlog for the time they need to spend during Scrum Rituals (Events). Furthermore, note that, this collaborative maintenance of the Scrum Product Backlog helps to clarify the requirements and creates buy-in of the emerging software product from the Scrum Team members. What Is The Sprint Backlog? This Might Surprise You! The Sprint Backlog stores and maintains user stories required to deliver the shippable software increment of a Sprint. These user stories are the ones the Scrum Team committed during the Sprint Planning Meeting. All user stories in the Sprint Backlog are estimated to enable the monitoring and tracking of the work. The Sprint Backlog is a living artifact, and during the course of Sprint, the Scrum team members continuously update it. When a Scrum Team member works on a task, his or her name is associated with it. The status of the task is set to “Started Tasks” or “Work In Progress”. When the task is completed according to its Definition of Done, its status is set to “Done” or “Completed”. New tasks (not new user stories) can be added to the Sprint Backlog during the Sprint. At the end of every day, the remaining effort to deliver the full Sprint Backlog is calculated. This helps the Scrum Team and the Scrum Product Owner to monitor the remaining amount of work to bring the Sprint goals to success. The Sprint Backlog can be kept electronically by using a Scrum Project Management Software or spreadsheet software such as Excel or Google Sheet. Alternatively, for smaller and new teams, cards (or post-its) glued on a real physical board can be used too. The latter has some advantages such as transparency of work and easy access for everyone, including the stakeholders. Its downside is that it’s not sustainable if the Scrum Team is distributed over multiple locations. The figure below shows a sample of how such a Sprint Backlog Board can be built. The structure should be adapted to reflect the needs of the project and the Scrum Team. A Sample Sprint Backlog Board It’s evident that for a Scrum Team to work productively, they need to understand the difference between a Product Backlog and a Sprint Backlog, and how these two elements interact to execute forward the project. Remember that there is a complete list of user stories from the Product Backlog. And now, a small subset of this list is being moved to Sprint Backlog to accomplish the goals of the Sprint. During the Sprint Planning Meeting, all members of the Scrum Team should discuss what tasks must be done and how these tasks will be completed. It’s at this point that each item on the Sprint Backlog is broken down into tasks or steps that will be taken to complete the committed user stories. All of this must be clearly communicated and agreed upon, so the Scrum Team members have an unmistakable consensus about what is coming in the Sprint and what it takes to accomplish its goals. What Is A Sprint? This Might Surprise You! In the scrum framework, all activities to implement the requirements happen during Sprints. Sprints are cycles of work activities to develop shippable software product or service increments. Sprints are also sometimes called iterations. You think about sprints as if they’re micro projects. As the term “Sprint” implies, a sprint doesn’t take long, and it’s maximum for four weeks. Sprints are always short, usually between 2 to 4 weeks. But depending on the reliably foreseen amount of work or for Exploration Sprints, a one week long Sprint is also typical. With the approval of the Scrum Product Owner, a Scrum Team may need an Exploration Sprint to investigate new technology, build a mock-up or a proof of concept. Different from a running race, at the end of a Sprint, the Scrum Team shouldn’t be out of breath and power. Instead, the Scrum Team should be fresh, and they should energetically start the next Sprint. The Scrum Software Development and Delivery Framework has nothing to do to create pressure and stress for its team members. It’s a well known fact that people perform best when they can work focused, relieved, and undistracted. If it’s applied correctly this is what Sprints help us accomplish. Every Sprint starts with a Sprint Planning Meeting. During the Sprint Planning Meeting, the Scrum Team decides what and how many requirements they will implement in this given Sprint. Subsequently, the Scrum Team starts the execution of activities to deliver requirements. Daily Scrum (Daily Scrum Meeting) happens every day at the same time in the same place. The goal of this meeting is to align all members of the Scrum Team regularly. Scrum Team Members can also ask help from the Scrum Master to remove any impediments which may potentially slow down or block the progress of a Sprint. The Scrum Team finalizes a Sprint with Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective meetings. The Sprint Review Meeting enables the Scrum Product Owner to review and control the work results the Scrum Team has created during the Sprint. During the Sprint Retrospective Meeting, the Scrum Team reflects the way they work together, how they use the Scrum Framework, and how they can improve. So the Scrum Team jointly takes these improvement potentials and feedback into account during the next Sprint Planning Meeting.Sprints enable such feedback loops during short periods with small batch sizes of work. That’s one of the significant reasons why and how the Scrum framework helps teams and organizations to improve themselves continuously.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #10 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is User Story In The Scrum Framework? This Might Surprise You! The entries in the Scrum Product Backlog are often written in the form of User Stories. A User Story tells a short story about the requirements of someone while he or she is using the software product we are building. It has a name, a brief narrative, and acceptance criteria for the story to be counted as completed. The advantage of user stories is that they precisely focus on what the user needs and wants without going into the details on how to achieve them. How to achieve them will be the job of the Scrum team as a later stage, There are different recommendations on how to define User stories. A well known and reliable template is: As an [actor], I [want|must] [action] so that [achievement] Or in a shorter version:As an [actor], I [want|must] [achievement] The Actor is the owner of the user story. That is often a user, but it is advisable to be more specific. By using particular actors such as an administrator, logged in customer, or unauthenticated visitor or so on, user stories become distinctive. So they set requirements into a proper context everyone can understand. The Action is what the Actor wants to do. If it is a mandatory requirement, it can be prefixed as must. Otherwise, it’s prefixed as want. The Achievement is what the Actor wants to achieve by performing the Action. That’s the Actor’s envisioned business result or a functional technical component that emerges once the Action is completed. How To Estimate Effort For Stories In The Scrum Framework? This Might Surprise You! All user stories within the Scrum Product Backlog have to be estimated to allow the Scrum Product Owner to prioritize them and plan releases. That means the Scrum Product Owner needs a reliable assessment of how much the delivery of each user story will take. Nevertheless, it is recommended that the Scrum Product Owner does not interfere with the estimations that the Scrum Team performs. So the Scrum Team delivers its estimates without feeling any pressure from the Scrum Product Owner. The Scrum Framework itself does not prescribe a way for the Scrum Teams to estimate their work. The teams who rely on the Scrum Framework do not deliver their estimates of user stories based on time or person-day units. Instead, they provide their estimates by using more abstract metrics to compare and qualify the effort required to deliver the user stories. Common estimation methods include: Numeric sizing (1 through 10),T-shirt sizes (XS, S, M, L, XL, XXL, XXXL), orthe Fibonacci sequence (0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc) An Example User story The Scrum Team members must share a common understanding and consensus of the unit of estimations they use so that every member of the team feels and acts comfortable with it. Planning Poker® / Scrum Poker One commonly used method for the estimation process is to play Planning Poker® (also called Scrum Poker). When using Planning Poker®, the social proof influence among the Scrum Team members are minimal. Therefore, the Scrum Team produces more accurate estimation results. What you need to play Planning Poker® game is straightforward: The list of features to be estimatedDecks of numbered cards. A typical deck has cards showing the Fibonacci sequence, including a zero: 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89. Other similar progressions are also possible. The reason for using the Fibonacci sequence is to reflect the uncertainty in estimating larger items. It would be a waste of time to discuss if a user story should have a size of 19, 20 or 21. And yet, it’s relatively easier to decide if the user story fits better to the size 13 or 21. A high estimate could mean that the Scrum Team members have not very well understood the user story yet. So they can attempt to secure extra capacity for contingency before their commitment to this user story. Alternatively, that could also mean that the user story should be broken down into multiple smaller user stories.Scrum teams can usually estimate smaller and clearer user stories with higher confidence. Finally, the Scrum Team plays Planning Poker® by adhering the following steps: The Scrum Product Owner presents the story to be estimated. The Scrum Team asks questions, and the Scrum Product Owner articulates the user story in more detail. If the Scrum Team has to assess many user stories, estimates can be time-boxed in a way that the Scrum Team does not spend more than a few minutes for each user story. If the team cannot still estimate a user story in a given time-box, then this could be a signal to which the Scrum Product Owner needs to pay attention. This signal indicates that either the end-user requirement or the user story or both of them are not clear enough, so they need to be rewritten.Each member of the Scrum Team privately chooses the card representing the estimation.After everyone has selected a card, all selections are revealed.People with high and low estimates are asked to explain their assessment because they may have thought something that the majority of the Scrum Team members have been unable to see.Another estimation is done for this particular user story until the team reaches a consensus for an estimate.The Scrum Team repeats the game until they estimate all user stories. Planning Poker® is a registered trademark of Mountain Goat Software, LLC. What Is The Definition Of Done In The Scrum Framework? This Might Surprise You! In the Scrum framework, the factors which define when a feature is complete and when it meets the required quality standards are set by Definition of Done (DoD). As it was clarified before in this material, DoDs specify the expected outcome in terms of functional and non-functional requirements, design, coding, unit testing, end-user validations, documentation, and so on. DoDs are defined in the levels of both user stories and tasks. DoDs of user stories focus on functional and non-functional client requirements, whereas DoDs of tasks focus on the desired working activities from the Scrum Team members. The Scrum Team is not allowed to close the user stories, and obviously, the tasks that do not fulfill their DoDs. Definition of Done (DoD) is used to decide whether a User Story from the Sprint Backlog is complete or not. DoD is a comprehensive checklist of required activities to ensure that only truly completed features are delivered, not only in terms of functionality but in terms of quality as well. The norms which a Scrum Team uses to define DoDs may vary from one team to another, but it must be consistent within a given Scrum Team. There are usually different DoDs at various levels: DoD for a Project/Product (In the project goals)DoD for a Release (In the release goals)DoD for a Sprint (In the sprint goals)DoD for a User Story (In the User Story)Dod for Tasks (In the task) One more essential thing to keep in mind here is that a DoD is neither static nor indisputable. During the course of a project, a release, or a sprint, a DoD can be challenged by anyone from the Scrum team or other business and IT stakeholders. As long as the proposed changes of a DoD makes sense and they’re brought up to bring the project to success, the Scrum Team and the Scrum Product Owner should be open minded to listen to those proposals and implement them when and where necessary.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #9 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox How Does The Scrum Framework Work Without A Project Manager? This Might Surprise You! In a traditional project, typically, a Product Manager defines the requirements. Then the Product Manager delegates the realization to a Project Manager. Afterward, the Project Manager coordinates all activities needed to deliver the requirements of the project. The Scrum Framework does not define a “Project Manager” role in the classical sense. And yet, the tasks of this role are still required to deliver a project successfully. Within the Scrum Framework, the responsibilities of a Project Manager are distributed over the functions of the Scrum Product Owner and the Scrum Master. The definition of the role and responsibilities of the Scrum Product Owner takes possible conflicts that may arise between the Product Owner and the Project Manager into account. Decisions about functionality, release planning, and budgeting can be made much more comfortable, quicker and better if one person is responsible for the execution, controlling, and documentation of those activities. Otherwise, there would always be a constant tension between the Scrum Product Owner (not responsible for the project) and the Project Manager (not responsible for the execution of work). The goal of any reliable process should be to avoid this potential conflict that impacts the functional and tactical administration of the work that the Scrum Team performs. And that’s precisely what the Scrum Framework aims to accomplish. Therefore, the typical responsibilities of Project Managers and Product Managers are merged into the Scrum Product Owner role. Nevertheless, the Scrum Master takes over some responsibilities of a traditional Project Manager. Tracking the tasks in Sprints and facilitating the resolution of impediments are among his duties. Since he or she is part of the Scrum Team, it is much easier and much more efficient to handle such activities directly in the team.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #8 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is The Role Of The Scrum Team? This Might Surprise You! The Scrum Framework recognizes three roles: The Product Owner,The Scrum Team Member,The Scrum Master. In addition to other programs it’s providing to its worldwide students, International Scrum Institute provides three primary training and certification programs for these three roles. These programs are namely Scrum Product Owner Accredited Certification (SPOAC), Scrum Team Member Accredited Certification (STMAC), and Scrum Master Accredited Certification (SMAC) . A proper scrum organization must adequately possess people from all these three skill-sets. That’s particularly essential to succeed with the scrum software development framework. None of these roles is indispensable and irreplaceable. They cannot be combined with the other scrum roles and functions.Each Scrum Product Owner typically works together with one scrum team. Each Scrum Team has its own Scrum Master, and each Scrum Master cares and works with one single Scrum Team. Please don’t underestimate the importance of understanding the purpose and function of these roles and employing them with adequate talents. Many times we observed that the root cause of difficulties of a scrum team is either because these roles are not understood or they don’t employ the right people. Each of these roles has a defined set of responsibilities. Only if the owners of these roles fulfil these responsibilities, closely interact, collaborate, and work together, they can finish a Scrum project successfully. Scrum Roles & Stakeholders The Scrum Team Within the Scrum Framework, dedicated Scrum Teams do all work delivered to the business clients. A Scrum Team is a collection of individuals working together to provide the requested and committed product increments. To work effectively, it is essential for a Scrum Team that everyone within the team: Embraces values of the Scrum Framework such as Courage, Focus, Commitment, Respect, and Openness, Adheres the same norms and rules,Follows the common goal, which wires them to both IT and business outcomes. When setting up a new Scrum Team, you always need to keep in mind that no new team will deliver with the highest possible performance right from the beginning. After setting up the team, it has to go through certain phases as described by the Tuckman-Model: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing. Tuckman's Stages of Team Development How long it takes until the Scrum Team reaches the Performing Phase varies from team to team. Hiring good basketball players for the same club will not make a good basketball team as soon as they start to play together. They first need to learn and adapt their playing styles, their strengths and weaknesses to assist each other, and to play in harmony. Scrum teams are not that different. Therefore, it’s vital to keep in mind that it usually takes about 3 to 5 Sprints until the team becomes mature enough to deliver its results effectively and predictably. Characteristics of a Scrum Team Scrum Teams have the following characteristics: Team members share the same norms and rules,The Scrum team as a whole is accountable for the delivery,The Scrum Team is empowered,The Scrum Team is working as autonomous as it is possible,The Scrum Team is self-organizing,The skills within the Scrum team are balanced,A core Scrum Team is small and has no sub-teams,The Scrum Team members are dedicated to their teams with 100% capacity,Scrum Team members are collocated, and they ideally share the same room. Rules & Norms The environment, business, IT, and geographical ecosystem of Scrum Teams invisibly define some of the norms the teams follow. And yet, to become a truly successful Scrum Team, some rules and norms should be explicitly developed and exercised during the Norming phase. These common standards are essential, and they can’t be overemphasized to deliver smooth gameplay, IT, and business results. Otherwise, the Scrum Team members would have to continually switch back and forth between different value systems and rule sets, and they waste their valuable time. Just a few examples of such norms and rules are: The goal, scope, duration, location, participants and outcomes of Scrum Rituals (Events),Required level of details to write clear, concise and unmistakable Definition Of Dones (DoDs),Guidelines to prioritize and estimate user stories and tasks, Guidelines, procedures and the level of details to create living documents, Tools to use and tools not to use (remember, sometimes less is more), Coding standards,Tools and guidelines to build/perform manual/automated tests and ensure quality,The process to resolve bugs,The process to handle change requests,The process to prepare to product increment demonstrations during Sprint Review Meetings,The process to handle the outcomes of each Scrum Ritual (Event), Frequency, depth, and duration of Backlog Refinement Meetings. Accountability The Scrum Team as a whole is responsible for delivering the committed user stories in time and with the highest possible quality. A good result or a failure is never attributed to a single team member but always the result of the Scrum Team. Empowerment & Self-organization The Scrum Team has to be empowered to define What the team commits to deliver at the end of the Sprint, How the committed user stories will be broken down into tasks,Who will perform a specific task and in which order the tasks are implemented. Only if the Scrum Team is empowered to decide these and similar internal decisions, the team members will work with higher performance and motivation for the interest of their client stakeholders. Balanced set of skills Each Individual within the Scrum Team will most certainly have specialized skills, focus, and personal preference of interests. However, to achieve the best possible performance, your Scrum Team needs to have a balanced set of skills. Only then the Scrum Team will be able to deal with the ever-changing IT and business challenges, and they can act as autonomous as it is possible. That means a Scrum Team should be multidisciplinary (designers, developers, testers, architects, etc.) right from the beginning. On the other hand, this also means that each team member should learn a little bit from each other’s specialization. For instance, to be able to finish a committed user story until the end of the Sprint, a developer should willingly write and execute tests, and consult the tester whenever necessary. The roles of the Scrum Team members are not compartmentalized like the architect, the developer, the tester, and so on. They all share the same title, “Scrum Team Member” regardless of their core personal competencies. Size of the Scrum Team Scrum Teams are small. The ideal size is 7 +/- 2 people. Note that if the Scrum Team contains more than nine members, your team will most probably suffer due to excessive overhead of alignment and communication. And yet, there is no one size fits all answer. Your Scrum Teams may still productively function even if they have less than five or more than nine members. The only way to find this out is to test, learn, and adapt. If you find out that a team of 13 people cannot perform well enough, then these Scrum Teams need to be split into two teams. These Scrum Teams should closely align, and they correlate their goals and user stories. Besides that, they work independently. Collocation To minimize unnecessary communication overhead, each Scrum Team should be collocated. If the work has to spread over multiple geographical locations, independent Scrum Teams need to be created. These teams need to align and correlate their goals and user stories. Responsibilities of the Scrum Team The Scrum Team has specific responsibilities they need to fulfill: They have to breakdown the user stories, create tasks, define priorities and estimates, and they self-organize the implementation. In other words, they have to create, process, and deliver the Sprint Backlog.They have to perform Daily Scrum Meetings.They have to ensure that at the end of the Sprint, potentially shippable product increment is delivered and demonstrated. They have to update the status and the remaining work efforts for their tasks to allow the creation of a Sprint Burndown Diagram. What Is The Role Of The Scrum Master? This Might Surprise You! The Scrum Master serves all participants of a Scrum Project and the external stakeholders to comprehend and apply the Scrum Framework correctly. He or she supports the Scrum Team to execute the Scrum Framework successfully and contributes them to improve their productivity and performance continuously. The role of the Scrum Master is to establish the Scrum Process in its organization, the new way of thinking and acting. Furthermore, the Scrum Master acts as a change agent. He or she coaches the team to develop new team norms and standards. The Scrum Master has its desk somewhere very close to the rest of the scrum team. Essential tasks of a Scrum Master owner are: To establish the Scrum Framework in his or her business and IT ecosystem,To act as a change agent and support the adaptation of existing processes to maximize productivity of the Scrum Team.To coach the Scrum Team to understand and live the values of the Scrum Framework,To ensure efficient and close collaboration between the Scrum Product Owner and the Scrum Team,To remove impediments which hinder the continuity of work,To lead progress of work by serving,To moderate the Scrum Rituals (Scrum Events).To guard the Scrum Team from external interference and interruptions while the team does work it has originally committed for a Sprint. Easily Learn Scrum and Officially Prove Your Know how To effectively do this work, a Scrum Master needs to possess savvy moderation and coaching skills. He or she needs to be a continuous learner to inspire others to learn, change, and grow. To learn more about Scrum Master’s duties as a facilitator, I recommend you to have a look at this article: If I had 5 Minutes to explain Scrum Master As a Facilitator. To learn more about Scrum Master’s duties as a facilitator, I recommend you to have a look at this article: If I had 5 Minutes to explain Scrum Master As a Facilitator. The Scrum Master is part of the Scrum Team and acts as a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. In the beginning, this will be a full-time job so that the Scrum Master will not be able to contribute to the Sprint results directly. However, after a few Sprints, while the Scrum Team approach to the Performing phase of the Tuckman model, the initial workload as moderator and coach will reduce. So, the Scrum Master could actively contribute to the Sprint goals. Since there must be trust between the Scrum Master and the Scrum Team members, it can always be a good idea that the Scrum Team chooses its Scrum Master. However, in reality, the management usually imposes who the Scrum Master will be. To get the required trust, the Scrum Master should have no line management responsibility above the Scrum Team members. Otherwise, open communication in the Scrum Team and joint ownership of work and decision-making ability of the Scrum Team can suffer. Guarding The Scrum Team, Removing Impediments An essential job of the Scrum Master is to safeguard the Scrum Team from a false sense of urgency. Line management and the Scrum Product Owner often attempt to add unplanned user stories to the Sprint Backlog while the team focuses on the work of a planned Sprint. However, one of the critical aspects of the Scrum Framework is that all user stories are known and committed only during the Sprint Planning Meetings. The Scrum Team cannot be forced to take over new user stories. The job of the Scrum Master is to ensure that until the next Sprint Planning Meeting, these new user stories are stored in the Scrum Product Backlog. Alternatively, if the ongoing Sprint does not make any business and/or technical sense to continue, it can be canceled, and a new Sprint can be planned. Scrum Team members should only concentrate on delivering client value by building potentially shippable product increment. The Scrum Master helps by removing impediments that block or slow down the progress of work. Examples of removing impediments could be: To arrange support, resources,To find missing know how, andTo do hands-on work to help the Scrum Team Members. Scrum Master as a Change Agent One of the cornerstones of the Scrum Framework is the continuous improvement through Inspect & Adapt. The Scrum Master hosts and moderates the Scrum Retrospective Meeting, and his or her job is then to facilitate, control and measure the change of the identified shortcomings. Facilitation of Scrum Rituals (Event) The Scrum Framework defines several meetings that have to be organized and facilitated by the Scrum Master: Scrum Grooming (Backlog Refinement) Meetings,Sprint Planning MeetingsDaily Scrum Meetings,Sprint Review Meetings, andSprint Retrospective Meetings What Is The Role Of The Scrum Product Owner? This Might Surprise You! The Scrum Product Owner is a central role within the Scrum Framework. That role unifies product and project management tasks, and it’s also firmly integrated with software development and delivery. The product owner’s role is far broader than traditional project management, program manager, or product management roles. He or she represents the end customers and/or other stakeholders and is responsible for maximizing the value of the product by ensuring that the Scrum Team delivers the right work at the right time. The Scrum Product Owner decides the software requirements provided for a specific software version, and when the software will be released. She represents functional and nonfunctional demands from end-users. That means that the Scrum Product Owner has to work very closely with the Scrum Team and coordinates their activities over the entire lifecycle of the project. No one else is allowed to impose the Scrum Team to work for a different set of priorities. Essential tasks of a Scrum Product owner are: To manage and clarify project requirements,To guide releases and to ensure return on investment (ROI),To closely work with the Scrum Team and enable it to deliver the correct work on time,To manage stakeholders and their expectations,To manage the Scrum Product Backlog. The Scrum Product Owner can delegate certain activities (like physically maintaining the Scrum Product Backlog). However, he or she still owns the accountability of his or her tasks. Managing the Product Backlog The Scrum Product Owner is the only person allowed to own the contents of the Scrum Product Backlog. That means he or she needs to: Create, maintain and clearly describe user stories in the Scrum Product Backlog,Prioritize user stories to accomplish business goals and fulfil the mission of software product,Ensure that the Scrum Team correctly comprehends and implements the user stories in the Scrum Product Backlog. Release Management The Scrum Product Owner is responsible for reaching the project goals. He or she creates and maintains the release plan and decides about deliveries, end-user functions, and the order they need to be delivered. Scrum Product Owners often manage the costs and budget of Scrum Teams too. They collaborate with the Scrum Team members to fine-tune, prioritize, and estimate user stories. Stakeholder Management External stakeholders should not directly bring their demands to the Scrum Team members. Instead, the Scrum Product Owner should collect and assess required functionalities with the stakeholders (for instance, with internal clients, representatives of external clients or end-users). The Scrum Product Owner combines, filters and initially prioritize these user stories before they're discussed them with the rest of the Scrum Team. Collaboration With The Scrum Team For a successful project, the Scrum Product Owner and the Scrum Team must work very closely. The Scrum Product Owner is responsible for ensuring that the Scrum Team members are informed and aligned about the aimed goals of software they’re building. During Sprint Review Meetings, the Scrum Product Owner is responsible for inspecting, accepting, or declining deliverables of the Scrum Team. What Is The Role Of The Scrum Team Member? This Might Surprise You! The Scrum Team Members implement the software. They jointly decide the number of requirements that they can undoubtedly deliver during a particular product increment called“Sprint”. A high-performer scrum team has most of the software engineering skills typically in it. Software developers, architects, testers, database administrators, and team members from all other roles work together. They jointly build and deliver great software their client is paying for. Scrum team members do no longer belong to a functional silo of a matrix organization. Developers do no longer belong to software development competence centers, and testers do no longer belong to the software testing competence center, and so on. Regardless of their past coordinates in the organization, members of a scrum team belong to their particular scrum project. Now their job is to build the best possible software to deliver the requirements of their scrum product owner. Characteristics of scrum teams are: Empowered and Autonomous,Cross-functionalSelf-organized and smallFull-time participantsWorking in the same roomOne for all, all for one. It's an excellent time to remind that the Scrum Team members follow Scrum values persistently. CourageFocusCommitmentRespectOpenness

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #7 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Can Cause Chaos And Frustration Before The Scrum Framework? This Might Surprise You! To better understand the impact of the scrum framework to our software engineering practices and businesses, it makes sense to have a look at a day in the life (or a software project in life). Therefore, I would love to briefly talk about a software project from the past before we adopted the scrum development and software delivery framework in our organizations. A few days before I wrote these lines, we had lunch with one of my ex-colleagues with whom we used to work together almost 20 years ago. This gentleman, Marcus has got his scrum master certification and scrum product owner certification from International Scrum Institute. He currently works as a scrum master for one of the leading software houses in the agile project management software domain. As a scrum master, Marcus is now in charge of operating an agile scrum team whose scrum team members located in geographically distributed locations around the globe. During our lunch, Marcus admitted that there are a lot of typical challenges with distributed agile scrum teams. Some of the problems he specifically mentioned related to his software project configuration are: Differences in working styles among scrum team members, Timezone differences,Cultural misfits, andLanguage constraints. Despite these difficulties, Marcus still added that running a software project with the agile scrum process is more fun, productive, and enriching than how we used to work 20 years ago. Compared to days when we used to work without scrum software development and scrum software delivery processes. Marcus' statement was indeed a big testimonial for the credit of the scrum framework from a very accomplished and experienced manager, scrum master, and product owner. Thank you, Marcus! Then we explained to him one of our past software projects before we used to meet with the scrum framework. I’m sure that many scrum masters would resemble this experience to their previous projects before they’ve gotten their scrum master certifications. Back in the late 1990s, we were part of a software engineering group to build a smart card-based public key infrastructure. Smart cards securely protected private keys of infrastructure members, associated public keys and their wrapper certifications were openly distributed (as the name public implies). Back in the day, this was by itself a relatively complex IT project that required multiple interdependent hardware engineering and software engineering teams. We had to do massive amounts of research and development (R&D) to build a fully functional hardware and software system. Remember these are days before we had the minimum viable product (MVP) concept to experiment, create, learn, and experiment again. Without scrum to create such a sophisticated infrastructure that constituted numerous hardware and software elements was a real challenge. Here are three significant setbacks we used to have without any scrum masters and anyone who possesses a scrum master certification in our teams. Had To Plan The Entire Project Before Understanding The Project? This Might Surprise You! Without scrum, our teams had built and delivered entirely wrong software and hardware products that did not fulfill demands from our client. We had times in our professional lives when some third party companies had imposed how we supposed to build our software products or software services. Capability Maturity Model (CMM), ISO 9001:2008 and other derivates attempted to help our companies to ensure we build our correct software in correct ways. How successful they used to be is not part of this book. This book was meant to focus on the scrum process and meri ts of the scrum framework rather than criticizing almost extinct procedures. However, I have to add that these process improvement frameworks before the scrum software engineering framework recommended a phased approach. They advised a phased software engineering approach which we called the Waterfall Software Engineering Model. With the Waterfall Model, each software project was supposed to start with requirement analysis, where we aimed to understand what our client needed and wanted. Then we designed these requirements, we implemented them, we tested (verified) them, and we maintained them in our software production environments. Finally, we reached to end of the software engineering lifecycle. Nonetheless, the reality didn’t play out like that! The Waterfall Methodology vs The Scrum Framework Phases in the Classical Waterfall Software Development Model The adverse effects of unforeseen delays happened during a particular phase of the Waterfall Software Engineering Model were inevitable to the following software engineering phases. Studies have shown that in over 80% of the investigated and failed software projects, the usage of the Waterfall Methodology was one of the critical factors of failure. But why? As shown on the left side, when deploying the Waterfall Methodology, there is a strict sequential chain of the different project phases. A previous phase has to be completed before starting the next phase. Going back is, in most cases, painful, costly, frustrating to the team, and time-consuming. The project timeline is planned at the start. A releasable product is delivered only at the end of the project timeline. If one phase is delayed, all other phases are delayed too. To avoid this, project managers of the Waterfall Methodology usually try to anticipate all possibilities beforehand. That means that in one of the earliest phases of the project, they try to define all requirements as fine-grained and complete as possible. However, requirement definition in an initial stage of a project is often complicated, and therefore many requirements change (or should change) throughout the project. Studies have shown that in more extensive and complex projects, about 60% of the initial requirements do change throughout the course of projects. Other requirements are implemented as define, but some of them are not really needed by the customer. So those implementations consume time and money that could have been better used to implement functionality with a higher added value for its clients. The separation into different project phases forces project managers to estimate each phase separately. The problem is that most of these phases usually are not separate. They are working together and in parallel. For instance, no reasonable human-being can assume that the development phase finished before the testing phase started. And yet, this is precisely and unfortunately how the Waterfall Methodology used to work. The Waterfall Methodology for developing software can be used for implementing small and straightforward projects. But for bigger and more complex projects, this approach is highly risky, if not insane. It’s often costlier and always less efficient than Scrum software development and delivery framework. This was the life before the Scrum framework. Sending our software back and forth between various teams, without the guidance of professionals with the Scrum skills, made our work bureaucratic, complex and unproductive. Finally, it wasn’t only the product which suffered, but also employee morale and commitment to our organizational mission have wholly disrupted. Overcoming A Lack Of Commitment, Change Management & Team Work! This Might Surprise You! The most significant weakness of process improvement frameworks used before Scrum was that: They mainly focused on self-serving organizational demands of leadership. Some of these demands are monitoring, compliance, and predictability. There was no focus on serving clients well and increasing employee morale at all. Thus members of software management teams and various other internal and external stakeholders attempted to have a fixed deadline for software delivery projects and easily monitor the progress of software engineering phases. They penalized their people if something was outside the planned track, and they hoped to fix emerging issues before the scheduled date of project completion. Furthermore, independent silos realized entirely separated software engineering phases. As an example, the development team was completely independent of a software testing (verification) team. Most people who supposed to work for the same business mission didn’t even know each other by their names. Have you got a guess about the reason for this silo-mentality in our organizations rather than focus on business missions and professional (business) maturity of employees? The reason is simply the matrix management . Matrix management is an organizational management and employee structure, and it has been in our businesses since the 1970s. At first glance, the differentiating idea behind a matrix organization or matrix management seems to be smart. The Leadership creates an organizational structure by bringing together employees with similar kinds of functional and technical skill-sets into the same or at best neighbor silos. The Waterfall Project Delivery Model in a Matrix Organization Back in times, it was quite popular to see the so called “Center of Competences” in our companies where each center of competence represented an independent and autonomous silo. One silo for C++ developers, another silo for database administrators, and another entirely separate quality assurance silo in oversees and it goes on and on. Go and figure! The biggest challenge with the matrix organizational structure was that: To deliver a software project without the scrum framework and scrum masters, project managers had to borrow employees from silos temporarily. These employees did not even physically position with their project teams, but they still located in the rooms of their particular center of competences. Up upon completion of projects, these temporary project teams dissolved and project participants moved on their next assignments to serve for other projects. Therefore, the targeted business values of these ongoing software projects have never been the utmost priority for these independent silos. They tend to see their work as checkboxes they ticked for one project over here and another project over there. Leadership and matrix organizational model didn’t teach them how professionals should commit their business to improve the bottom line, including sales, revenue, and profit. A McKinsey Quarterly article written by McKinsey & Company has also clearly illustrated this illusion of cost optimization beyond the matrix organization . Gartner has estimated that organizations worldwide have been yearly spending 600 billion USD to recover their IT systems from non-scheduled maintenance work and defects. Now let’s take a short moment to visualize how the change management and impediment handling of software projects played out. How t hey pl ayed out i n a proj ect configuration with the waterfall model, with the matrix organization, and without the scrum process. Yes. You’re right. Management and employees treated change management, impediment, and error handling as if they’re ill exceptions which shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Therefore, changes in a software project have been the synonym of delays. They usually created a domino effect of cascading delays. Teams required someone to blame and finger point for defects and impediments. Last, but not least, because silos did not have a mechanism in place to process, fix, and learn from their errors, they kept on repeating the same mistakes. Furthermore, they kept on augmenting the amount of technical debt while they passively attempted to deal with their problems. Why Should Democratic Decisions Not Be Overruled? This Might Surprise You! Steve Jobs once said: “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do. We hire smart people, so they can tell us what to do.” However, this is precisely opposite of how most of the mainstream leadership used to operate to make decisions before the scrum era. Before we had the scrum process in our organizations, autocratic decisions from leaders overruled the combined intelligence of their teams. They invalidated the democratic decision making ability of groups who were in charge of doing the real works which spanned the entire software engineering lifecycle from the conception of software to its operations. The remoter a decision was shifted away from work centers (teams) it impacted, the more default it was to give a correct mission-critical decision. The judgments from leaders used to be usually impulsive, not thoroughly thought-out, mostly late and tentative, but sometimes even too early. These autocratic decisions imposed from the top made employees feel undervalued. They entirely hindered the ability of their organizations to come up with creative and innovative solutions to handle competitive business and software-related challenges. Furthermore, they discouraged software engineering teams from giving their inputs at the times when they’re asked to contribute decisions. It was a brief overview of how we used to develop and deliver our software services and service products before we adopted the scrum framework in our organizations. Now let’s have a look at how we sorted out these chaos and frustration elements with the help of the scrum process. What Makes The Scrum Framework Succeed? This Might Surprise You! The Scrum Framework changes the classic triangle of project management. Organizations do no longer need to sacrifice one of the time, budget, or quality. The new triangle is now emerging between the budget, time, and functionality. And none of these project success elements have to be endangered. Triangle of Project Management According to the Scrum framework, quality is no longer optional. To deliver what clients are paying for to flourish their businesses, the Scrum Teams strive to provide the best possible software they’re jointly able to build. In the Scrum framework, the factors which define when a feature is complete and when it meets the required quality standards are set by Definition of Done (DoD). DoDs specify the expected outcome in terms of functional and non-functional requirements, design, coding, unit testing, end-user validations, documentation, and so on. DoDs are defined in the levels of both user stories and tasks. DoDs of user stories focus on functional and non-functional client requirements, whereas DoDs of tasks focus on the desired working activities from the Scrum Team members. The Scrum Team is not allowed to close the user stories, and obviously, the tasks that do not fulfil their DoDs. Scrum Product Owner and the Scrum Team define user stories and their tasks throughout the course of the Scrum software engineering process incrementally. This incremental development allows the team to remain adaptive and adjust their next best actions in a controlled manner without the additional costs and risks of jeopardizing large chunks of previous work. The Scrum Team builds a potentially shippable software product increment until the end of each Sprint. The team demonstrates and discusses these increments with the Scrum Product Owner and client stakeholders to get and incorporate their feedback towards the next steps of their project. This flexibility applies to not only software delivery but also the operational processes. So, the Scrum Framework allows the optimization of the use of resources (human, time, budget, material) and the minimization of wastes. Studies have shown that Scrum has the following positive effects in practice: More frequent code deployments,Faster lead time from committing to deploying code,Faster mean time to recover from downtime,Lower change failure rate,Better product quality,Reduced or identical costs compared to pre Scrum deployment,Improved productivity and throughput,Improved code and operational reliability,Enhanced organizational performance and client satisfaction,Improved market penetration, market share, and profitability of organizations,Improved market capitalization growth,Improved motivation of employees. Introducing and adopting the Scrum Framework is non-trivial. And yet, the adaptive and iterative approach of the Scrum Framework handles this initial burden, and it copes with ever-changing client and business requirements better. Thus, the Scrum Framework is, in most cases, a better alternative to the classical software engineering methodologies.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #6 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox Learn Scrum Framework Using Real World Case Study! This Might Surprise You! Before Starting The First Sprint Alex works as the Scrum Product Owner of a new software development project. One of his first tasks is to assess and find out requirements to deliver business value his client is looking for. He needs to make sure that his client will get the correct software to achieve tangible business results. He writes down the essential use cases and discusses them with the architects, client representatives, and other stakeholders from IT and business units. After assembling the high-level use-cases and requirements, he writes them into the Scrum Product Backlog and initiates an estimation and prioritization session with the Scrum Team. As a result of this session, all items in the Scrum Product Backlog get an initial rough estimate and priority. During those sessions, Anna, the Scrum Master, ensures that everyone speaks the same language. So, the Scrum Product Owner, the Scrum Team Members, and their stakeholders arealigned with the anticipated goals. So they have an adequate understanding of potentially new concepts for them, such as Use Case, Backlog, Sprint, and so on. And most importantly, the Scrum software development and delivery process is correctly applied in the store. Now Alex, the Scrum Product Owner, begins to break down the high-level requirements into the first draft of smaller-grained user stories. With this list, he then calls for the first Sprint Planning Meeting. Sprint 1 – Day 0 During the Sprint Planning Meeting, Alex presents the Scrum Product Backlog items from the highest priority to the lowest. The Scrum Team asks and clarifies open questions. For each item, the team discusses if they have enough 25 capacity and the required know-how to develop and deliver it. The Scrum Team needs to ensure that all required human and technical resources are in place before the start of the Sprint. They need to confirm that all prerequisites and dependencies are fulfilled, which could be critical to delivering certain software features successfully. During Sprint Planning Meeting (What-Part), the Scrum Team commit to complete the user stories 1,2,3,6,7 and 8 until the end of the Sprint. So these user stories are now moved from the Scrum Product Backlog to the Sprint Backlog. The user stories 4 and 5 cannot be accomplished in this Sprint, as some prerequisite technical infrastructure is not yet in place. After the What-Part of the Sprint Planning Meeting, Anna, the Scrum Master, calls the Scrum Team to drill down how the team is going to implement the committed user stories (How-Part). The emerging tasks during the How-Part of the Sprint Planning Meeting are written down on the cards, and the team store them into the Sprint Backlog. Now all members of the Scrum Team are ready to select a task to begin to work on. Sprint 1 – Day 1 In the morning, the whole team gets together for their Daily Scrum Meeting. Everyone gives a brief and concise statementabout what he or she has done so far, updates the estimates of remaining work on the cards of the Sprint Backlog. Everyone tells what he or she is planning to do today, and reveals if there are any impediments which hinder them from processing any tasks. Today one of the Scrum Team members, Melinda, informs the Scrum Team that she has a problem with the license of the integrated software development environment she is using. Anna, the Scrum Master, checks if other team members have the same problem and confirms that she’ll take care of this impediment after the meeting. After about 15 minutes of this Daily Scrum Meeting, everyone goes back to work. After this meeting, Anna updates the Sprint Burn down Chart to visualize the progress of work during this Sprint. Then she calls the software vendor, orders the missing license, and delivers it to Melinda. Introduction to Scrum A Real World Example (Case Study ) across various Scrum Phases and Sprints Sprint 1 – Day 2 In the morning, the whole team gets together again for their Daily Scrum Meeting. In the afternoon, a member of the Scrum Team, James, has uncertainty about the expected outcome of one of the user stories. He calls Alex, Scrum Product Owner, and they discuss this user story to ensure that James properly understands it. After Alex gets informed and confident about how to proceed with this user story, he continues working on its implementation. Sprint 1 – Day 6 The days starts again with the Daily Scrum Meeting of the team. Anna, the Scrum Master, notices this morning that the meeting tends to take more than 15 minutes. The Scrum Team members are engaging with a discussion regarding the optimization of some database queries. Anna reminds the team that the Daily Scrum Meetings are not meant to do the work, but formally aligning the team about the work and bringing them on the same page. After the Daily Scrum Meeting, Alex (Product Owner) informs Anna (Scrum Master) that the client brought up several new requirements that may potentially impact the ongoing Sprint and the subsequent Sprints. Anna politely reminds Alex that the Scrum Team is unable to pick up these requirements during the current Sprint as the team has already committed to the scope (user stories) of this Sprint. And yet, Anna calls a Backlog Refinement Meeting for the afternoon so that Alex can inform the team about these new requirements. During this meeting, the group supports Alex to figure out where these user stories fit the overall development plan of the software, their initial task break-down, estimates, and priorities. Sprint 1 – Day 10 Finally, that’s the last day of this first Sprint. Anna, the Scrum Master, invites the Scrum Team for the Sprint Review Meeting. The team has prepared a non-production server with the latest version of the shippable software increment they created. Alex, the Scrum Product Owner, and Mr. Rich, one of the client stakeholders, sit in front of an instance of a graphical user interface of this software. They validate if the implementation meets the expectations and if the team documented details regarding the current level of application adequately. At the end of the Sprint Review Meeting, Alex concludes: The team delivered user stories 1,2,6 and 7 as committed and expected. The team couldn’t finish the user story 3 on time, and they didn’t demonstrate this user story at all. So, the remaining tasks of this user story are shifted to this next Sprint.The user story 8 did not fulfill some of its Definition of Done (DoD) criteria. This user story is moved to the next Sprint, so the team can define and complete the associated tasks to satisfy the DoD of this user story later. Alex, the Scrum Product Owner, and Mr. Rich, the client stakeholder, shortly debrief the Scrum Team about the upcoming changes and challenges about the software requirements and the direction of the overall strategy about this software should be going. Mr. Rich thanks the Scrum Team for their efforts and commitment and leaves the room. After the completion of the Sprint Planning Meeting, the Scrum Team sits together for the Sprint Retrospective Meeting. During this meeting, they discuss what went well during the Sprint and what could be improved, so that the likelihood of failed commitments like it happened with user stories 3 and 8 will reduce in the next Sprints. One of the hurdles identified from the Sprint Retrospective Meeting is that the team do not know enough about the overall system architecture. Anna, the Scrum Master, takes over the task of bringing a system architect on board to coach and guide the team at the beginning of the next Sprint. Sprint 2 – Day 1 Alex, the Scrum Product Owner, keeps on adding new requirements to the Scrum Product Backlog based on his recent client meetings. Moreover, he improves the way he articulated DoD of user story 8, so the Scrum Team can better envision the expected outcome from this user story. Alex then invites the team for the Sprint Planning Meeting for Sprint 2. The Scrum Team discuss and commit to user stories with the guidance of Anna, the Scrum Master, and subsequently, the second Sprint begins.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #5 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Are The Five Key Values Of The Scrum Framework? This Might Surprise You! We have already mentioned that the scrum framework is not only a software engineering process. It also has a robust set of underlying principles. In fact, most of the professional business domains can apply and utilize these principles. It's not enough to get a scrum certification to be hugely successful with the scrum. You should possess a firm grasp for scrum values to succeed with the Scrum framework So that you're going to deliver a great job and fantastic software that your customers and employers love. Let me now tell you more about those principles of the scrum process. Scrum Value #1. Courage There are times when doing the correct thing to serve the best values and benefits for our clients are not the easiest. In such moments, scrum master, scrum product owner, and the scrum team members should remember their duty and obligation. That’s to build the best possible products and services in their particular business and information technology domain. To be better than mediocre, a scrum team should sooner or later face difficult decisions that won’t make everyone happy in their particular ecosystem of stakeholders. To deal with this, all members of the scrum team should remember what they learned during their scrum certification training. They should remember to be courageous, and they should master to decide and act courageously. Scrum Value #2. Focus With the scrum framework, when you hear the value focus, you should be thinking about two things: Identification of correct work: What tasks are necessary to deliver the goals of my sprint? What are essential to developing the best software products and services for my clients so that they will be pleased with my work?Prioritization: What tasks should I be working on next? Each moment in time, there is one critical question that the entire scrum team, including scrum master and product owner, must be answering. This question is: “What are the most important things we should be doing at the moment to fulfil reasons of why an employer hired us in the first place?” Scrum framework has several built-in events (rituals) to ensure the reasonable prioritization of user stories and tasks. According to the scrum process, the prioritization of user stories and their associated tasks should have a continuous priority. So we make sure that the scrum team works on the right things in the correct order. Some of the built-in scrum ceremonies (scrum events) to prioritize our work and adjust our focus are: Scrum Grooming (Backlog Refinement) Meeting: Grooming Meeting solely focuses on prioritization for Product Backlog to prepare it before the upcoming Sprint Planning Meeting.Sprint Planning Meeting: These meetings help us see the dependencies and correct order of work to deliver our user stories.Daily Scrum Meeting: Daily Scrum (Daily Stand-Up) Meeting supports us to set the tone of an upcoming workday. We must direct our focus on where it’s most required.Sprint Review Meeting: Sprint review meeting indirectly shows us where the emphasis of the 21 scrum team must be channeling to have more successful reviews in the future.Sprint Retrospective Meeting: These meetings support the scrum team to prioritize what aspects of their engineering process must be first improved. Here in this section, I covered scrum rituals only from a focus point of view. You can find a more detailed explanation about the scrum ceremonies later in this material. Having read all these, it must be evident for you now how essential prioritization and focus for the scrum framework are. Scrum Value #3. Commitment Without the commitment of scrum master, scrum product owner, and the scrum team, there is no possibility to deliver outstanding results with software. In the world of the scrum software development process, most people translate the commitment value as the agreement and confinement of goals of given sprint deliverables. Although this entirely makes sense, that understanding is not flawless. Whenever you hear the word “commitment” within the context of scrum values; what you should remember is the word: “obsession”. To be successful in software engineering and, in life and business, you should become obsessed with your goals. So in the context of the scrum process, you should become obsessed with creating marvelous software for your clients to solve their problems. Why are commitment and the associated obsession with scrum goals so important? Because without the obsession with the team’s mi ssi on to bui l d and del i ver astoni shi ng software, each time the scrum team encounters a non-trivial impediment, your work will slow down and stall. Then the scrum master and the scrum team will start creating explanations to justify and legitimize for scrum product owner why they’re unable to deliver sprint goals. Excuses should have no more room in your team if your goal is to become a better than an average scrum team. Only with an enormously high level of dedication, it’s relatively more comfortable and fulfilling to solve the problems of our clients and help and build value for them with software. Scrum Value #4. Respect Regardless of their age, gender, race, belief, experience, competence, opinions, and work performance, every member of a scrum team must respect and count on each other. This respect is not only confined within the boundary of the scrum team. Moreover, every internal or external IT and business stakeholder who interacts with the scrum team is utterly respected and welcomed by a scrum team. Experienced team members must pay attention in order not to invalidate the willingness of the contribution from less experienced team members. It’s particularly crucial to properly receive and answer opposite opinions that the majority of the group do not agree with. Scrum Value #5. Openness The scrum value “openness” is often one of the primary differentiators between an average and high-performer scrum team. It would help if you resembled the openness capability of a scrum team to the vast ability of a collection of open minded individuals. They’re creative, innovative, intellectual, honest, direct, and humble. In the scrum software engineering and delivery process, there is no inappropriate opinion, decision, and action. The only condition is that they must be transparent, and they should aim to contribute to the joint mission of the scrum team. It doesn’t mean that every decision and action must necessarily accelerate the outputs of the scrum team, and they should result in substantial success stories. Thanks to openness and courage values, the scrum software development group is not afraid of making mistakes. They see their errors and less than optimal outcomes as vital chances to meaningfully improve their overall productivity and quality of work.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #4 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is Self Organization In Scrum Framework? This Might Surprise You! The scrum team organizes itself. Scrum team members decide in consensus about tasks they need to execute to deliver the goals of a sprint. A self-organized team doesn’t require a manager or a team leader. Self-organization in the scrum framework is very disciplined. Sprint Backlog, Sprint Burn down Chart, and Daily Scrum Meetings which you are going to learn more about them later in this material build the foundation of self-organization. Organizing the work by themselves requires for the most teams a learning phase. Competent scrum masters who own scrum master certifications support their scrum teams to excel with self-organization quickly. Self-organization also includes the ability to work together despite different opinions and possible conflicts among various scrum team members. Self-organization requires compliance and trust in joint decision-making processes. Those decision-making process in the scrum framework includes, but not limited to, planning, estimating, implementing, reporting, and reviewing the work the scrum team is jointly responsible. Yes? Then you need to bring up a team that can self-organize its own work! What Is Inspect And Adapt In Scrum Framework? This Might Surprise You! Scrum Inspect and Adapt is a straightforward concept to comprehend, but the hardest to properly implement and master. Companies have finally confirmed that none of their project managers can fully foresee the big picture of complex systems. They were unable to do reliable end-to-end planning. It was evident for them that they needed to try something different. Together with lean manufacturing (also known as lean movement), companies needed to develop a process to empower them strategically. They needed a standard operating procedure to help them learn and fix their courses of action while they’re running their projects and even operations. That was the birth of Toyota Improvement Kata, which we today call “Inspect and Adapt” while we talk about scrum software development and delivery framework. According to “Scrum Inspect and Adapt”: Step 1. Inspect: We do our best to grasp the current status of the project with our current level of know how and understanding about it. Step 2. Adapt: We define a direction and vision about the next steps of our project and then strategize and execute our vision. Step 3. Learn: We carefully observe, learn, and teach each other while we do so. We continuously log what works and what doesn’t work while we do our work.Step 4. Restart: Start over from Step 1 again. Note that those four steps described above are analog, but not limited to the following Scrum rituals (Scrum events). Step 1. Inspect is analog to Sprint Review Meetings and Sprint Retrospective Meetings.Step 2. Adapt is analog to Sprint Planning Meetings and Backlog Refinement Meetings.Step 3. Learn is analog to Daily Scrum Meetings.Step 4. Restart is analog to the closure of a sprint and the start of a new sprint.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #3 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is Agile Manifesto? This Might Surprise You! When the IT industry talks about the Scrum framework, It’s also often we hear the term “Agile Scrum” along the same lines as “Scrum”. It led some of us in the industry to think and look for differences between the terms “Agile Scrum” and “Scrum”. Here is good news for you. “Agile Scrum” and “Scrum” terms do both refer to the same thing. They both refer to the Scrum software engineering process. Then why do we sometimes use the word “Agile” in front “Scrum”? It’s because the scrum framework fully embraced and embedded the Agile Manifesto (Manifesto for Agile Software Development) to its core process, principles, and underlying philosophy. That brings us to understand the agile manifesto and the values of the scrum process better before we deep-dive the technicalities of the scrum process. Agile manifesto values: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools, Working software over comprehensive documentation, Customer collaboration over contract negotiation, Responding to change over following a plan. While the factors on the right-hand side do still possess significant values, the agile manifesto appreciates and prioritizes the factors on the lefthand side higher. The elements favored by the agile manifesto have been carefully time-tested and chosen to: Serve clients and stakeholders better and create value for them with software, Enhance the profession of software engineering regardless of your role, title, and career level.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #2 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is The Scrum Framework? This Might Surprise You! What is Scrum? Well, without making things too complicated, the Scrum framework can be defined as the following: Scrum is an iterative software engineering process to develop and deliver software. Although the software is the main focus of the Scrum framework, iterative and agile Scrum process can be and is already being applied outside the software industry as well. Most people in the IT industry believe that the term “Scrum” was coined early in the 2000s as a parallel track of emerging agile software development and delivery trends. That is a piece of incorrect information! The term “Scrum” was first used and published by Harvard Business Review in January 1986. Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka coined the term “Scrum” with their article: The New New Product Development Game. (Yes, two News) You should have a look at “The New New Product Development Game” to see how everything all about Scrum got started! Scrum can be used in all kinds of software development projects. To develop and deliver complete software packages or only some modules of larger systems — both for products and services of internal and external clients. The Scrum Framework is a lightweight process. It focuses on increasing the productivity of teams while reducing wastes and redundant activities. Scrum defines some general guidelines with a few rules, roles, artifacts, and events. Nevertheless, all of these components are critical, serve for specific purposes, and they are essential for the successful use of the Scrum framework. The main components of Scrum framework are: Three Scrum Roles: The Scrum Product Owner, the Scrum Team, and the Scrum Master.Five Scrum Events (Scrum Rituals) or Ceremonies: Scrum Grooming (Backlog Refinement) Meeting, Sprint Planning Meeting, Daily Scrum Meeting, Sprint Review Meeting, and Sprint Retrospective Meeting.Product Backlog (Scrum Backlog) or Scrum Product Backlog: An artifact that is used to manage and prioritize all of the known requirements of a Scrum project.Sprints: Cycles of work activities to develop shippable software product or service increments.Sprint Backlog: An artifact to keep track of requirements committed by the Scrum teams for a given Sprint. Self-organization and unconditional collaboration are critical elements of the Scrum framework. Scrum Teams do no longer require a project manager in a classical sense. With the Scrum framework, the Scrum Master and the Scrum Product Owner share the role and responsibilities of a typical project manager. Nonetheless, a Scrum Master or a Scrum Product is never allowed to overrule the democratic decision-making capability of a Scrum Team. For instance, only the Scrum team members can jointly commit which ones of highly prioritized Backlog items they will deliver in a Sprint as a software increment. Another central element with the Scrum framework is the continuous improvement that we enable with “inspect & adapt”. A Scrum Team continuously monitors, inspects, and assesses their artifacts and their use of Scrum framework to adapt and optimize them. These continuous efforts for optimization maximize quality, efficiency, client satisfaction, and therefore minimize wastes and overall project risks. The Scrum framework understands that the requirements are likely to change and they are not entirely known, especially at the beginning of projects. Every project has unknown unknowns. Sometimes a few, sometimes a lot. The Scrum framework helps us embrace that we can discover and deal with these unknown unknowns only while we are running our projects. The Scrum Team first fine-tunes and granularizes the lower-level or low priority requirements before it implements them. During Scrum Grooming (Backlog Refinement) and Sprint Planning Meetings. Openness for change, continuous optimization, and learning from errors are now becoming integral elements of the whole software engineering lifecycle. Another cornerstone of the Scrum framework is transparency and direct communication. The Scrum Product Owner works closely with the Scrum Team to identify and prioritize requirements. These requirements are written down as user stories and stored in the Scrum Product 15 Backlog. The Scrum Product Backlog consists of all tasks that need to be implemented to deliver a working software system successfully. A Scrum Team is empowered to select the user stories with which they are confident to deliver within the 2-4 weeks of Sprints. Because the Scrum Team commits its own goals, the team members feel more engaged, and they know that their opinions are listened to. This inclusion of Scrum team members to the natural flow and planning of software projects increases the team morale and subsequently augments the team performance. Scrum Masters possess another vital role in the Scrum Framework as they work as servant leaders for and with their Scrum Teams. Scrum Masters are trained facilitators to ensure flawless operation of their Scrum Teams. Sometimes they are master negotiators to protect their Scrum Teams from interruptions and fictive priorities of their stakeholders. Other times they are master communicators to remove or prevent known or anticipated impediments before these impediments bring their teams to dead-end streets. To only call a few of the responsibilities of Scrum Masters. We will cover more about the duties of various Scrum roles later. The Scrum Framework, in its pure form, is best suitable for highly independent, one team green field or brown field projects. However, the practical common sense of Scrum professionals did not stop there. With the introduction of additional roles and addendums such as “Chief Scrum Product Owner” and “Scaled Scrum”, it can be used within different project configurations too, including multi-team and geographically distributed project setups. We will cover more about these as well. For now stay tuned and keep on enjoying the lecture!

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #1 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox International Scrum Institute is an independent institute. We help organizations and professionals get certified with worldwide renowned and valid Scrum certification programs and prove their competence in the Scrum domain. We empower professionals globally to build their careers, and organizations to create and sell their outstanding products and services that their clients will love. Your renowned Scrum certification programs have proven their worldwide recognition by being the choice of more than 594,000 Scrum professionals in 143 countries. The term “Scrum” was first used and published by Harvard Business Review in January 1986. Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka coined the term “Scrum” with their article: The New New Product Development Game. So, the Scrum process was initially meant to be an open project management framework. Nonetheless, things didn’t work like that. The Scrum process has been heavily commercialized. Worst of all, Scrum has been subtly dogmatized, so it has started contradicting its very own “inspect and adapt” spirit which you will later learn more about it in this book. Professionals and organizations have wasted enormous amounts of training, certification, and then recertification fees for literally zero return on investment. https://www.scrum-institute.org Before International Scrum Institute was established for you, there used to be pressing challenges for Scrum professionals like yourself. You didn’t possess a reasonable alternative to get your Scrum certifications and prove your competence in the Scrum domain. Scrum professionals had to pay expensive fees for the one way profit-driven Scrum certification programs of other certification entities. Moreover, they had to pay hefty prices for classroom training, recurring certification renewals, and various additional recurring subscriptions and memberships. International Scrum Institute aims to remove these barriers set in front of the Scrum professionals in developed and emerging markets. We are here to save you from paying unreasonable fees for Scrum classroom training and Scrum certification programs before you certify your knowhow in Scrum. International Scrum Institute provides ten major online Scrum certification programs. These programs have been designed by our consortium of renowned business and people leaders, coaches, mentors, experts, and authorities from all major industries. Here is an overview of our Scrum certification programs we have created for you: Scrum Master Accredited CertificationScrum Product Owner Accredited CertificationScaled Scrum Expert Accredited CertificationAgile Scrum Leadership (Executive) Accredited CertificationScrum Trainer Accredited CertificationScrum Coach Accredited CertificationScrum Team Member Accredited CertificationScrum Certification for Web DeveloperScrum Certification for Mobile App DeveloperScrum Certification for Java Developer Moreover, feel free to check out the articles specified below to read why we perform and serve you far better than our competitors. Featured on LinkedIn with Hundreds of Likes: Scrum Master Certification Made Economical: Step-by-Step Plan8 Reasons Why International Scrum Institute Serves You Far More Better Than Its Competitors! https://www.scrum-institute.org