Agile Sprints: What Happens & When in a Scrum Iteration. Agile Strategies to Explain Doing Less Work. It might seem counterintuitive to convince people to do less work, but reducing work is actually one of the most effective ways to deliver the most value to your customers as quickly as possible. In fact, the authors of “The Agile Manifesto” suggested minimizing work in their Twelve Principles of Agile Software which states, “Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.”
However, it can also be difficult to convince someone that they shouldn’t take on work that they see as necessary to provide a specific value. I previously wrote about how to convince people to de-prioritize work, but there is some work that just shouldn’t be done at all. To help navigate this discussion, I’ve created a quick overview of common scenarios where pursuing work can often be a bad idea and how you can explain to someone that the work they suggest should not be pursued. Work That Adds the Wrong Value Sometimes, adding value isn’t a good thing. Work That Creates Duplicate Efforts.
Scrum 3.0 and Organization 4.0 - impressions from a great evening with Boris Gloger at ImmobilienScout24 | On the agile path. Today I had the opportunity to join a great and inspiring presentation by Boris Gloger talking about Scrum 3.0 and organization 4.0 (thanks to Immobilienscout24 for hosting a great event). With this post I provide a short summary of my notes and insights and links to further posts I already wrote about some topics presented today. Based on an initial blog post by Boris (DE) - we started today with a recap of the Scrum journey from Scrum 1.0, Scrum 2.0 and developed to today's Scrum status.
Scrum 1.0 foundation by e.g. What did we learn? Breaks between sprints don’t make senserole of PO was still a business analyst rolewhy 30 days and what does it mean - is it calendar days, what about Christmassprint planning and commitments did not work Scrum 2.0 roughly since 2004 - driving question, how could it really work? Scrum 3.0 ideas collected from the last 2-3 yearsall methods elaborated new best practices Product Owner Dailies NoMeetings One piece flow No estimates who still needs story point estimations? What powerful questions does Scrum help you answer? The video on powerful questions made me think about the deeper purpose of the various Scrum activities. Can I formulate Scrum as a series of Powerful Questions to be general enough, that they might be useful outside of software development? Here is the image I came up with and below are the questions I think each of the Scrum Activities and artefacts strives to help you answer.
Sprint The Sprint is a container to limit ourselves to setting reasonable medium-term goals. What can we reasonably expect to accomplish by the end of the sprint? Vision How will our efforts make the world a better place? Product Backlog What characteristics should our product have? Backlog Refinement What could we do to get us closer to our vision? Sprint Planning Part 1 - What is the best possible step forward, given what we know today? Daily Scrum What are our goals for the day? Sprint Review What have we accomplished or learned? Retrospective How can we work more effectively? Definition of Done.
SAP HANA SPS 11: New Developer Features. In this blog, we will collect the various smaller blogs that detail all the new developer related features in SAP HANA SPS 11. This will be a "living" document which is updated as new blogs are released. In this blog series we are going to describe a large number of new features in both the underlying HANA infrastructure and in particular in the custom development aspects of HANA native development. But before we get into describing all the new features, its important to note these innovations are delivered alongside the existing functionality. We haven't removed or disabled any of the current architecture. All of your custom development objects remain exactly where they are today and will continue to function as they do already.
The current XS Engine remains a part of the HANA infrastructure, although now renamed XS Classic so as to distinguish it from the new capabilities delivered as part of XS Advanced. SAP HANA SPS 11: New Developer Features; XS Advanced Coming early in 2016. Suggested Topics for Definition of Done Discussion. Ken Schwaber and the rest of us advocate paying attention to what “done” means for a Product Backlog Item (PBIs, or “stories”). For a lot of programmers (like me), “done” often means “It works on my workstation!” The Scrum Master is charged with advocating a “done” that includes everything else needed to build a potentially-shippable product increment. So we need a cross-functional team. To avoid nasty surprises at the Sprint Review Meeting, I’d suggest initially attaching a definition of done to each PBI during the estimation process.
Don’t be surprised if the estimate more than doubles — better to find out now than have the illusion of progress and an unpredictable ship date. If you’re using cards, write the definition of done on the cards. Scrum, a generalized framework rather than a defined process, doesn’t prescribe a particular definition of done. However, reading this may save you a couple iterations because the same kinds of things come up a lot. INVEST in Good Stories, and SMART Tasks | XP123.
(French) In XP, we think of requirements of coming in the form of user stories. It would be easy to mistake the story card for the “whole story,” but Ron Jeffries points out that stories in XP have three components: Cards (their physical medium), Conversation (the discussion surrounding them), and Confirmation (tests that verify them).
A pidgin language is a simplified language, usually used for trade, that allows people who can’t communicate in their native language to nonetheless work together. User stories act like this. We don’t expect customers or users to view the system the same way that programmers do; stories act as a pidgin language where both sides can agree enough to work together effectively. But what are characteristics of a good story? The acronym “INVEST” can remind you that good stories are: I – IndependentN – NegotiableV – ValuableE – EstimableS – SmallT – Testable Independent Stories are easiest to work with if they are independent. Negotiable… and Negotiated Valuable Small.
Scrum Training Series: Free Scrum Master Training. Scrum Methodology & Agile Scrum Methodologies. Scrum Reference Card | Scrum Reference Card. Print version A Management Framework Scrum is a management framework for incremental product development using one or more cross-functional, self-organizing teams of about seven people each. It provides a structure of roles, meetings, rules, and artifacts. Teams are responsible for creating and adapting their processes within this framework.
Scrum uses fixed-length iterations, called Sprints, which are typically 1-2 weeks long (never more than 30 days). An Alternative to Waterfall Scrum’s incremental, iterative approach trades the traditional phases of “waterfall” development for the ability to develop a subset of high-value features first, incorporating feedback sooner. Figure 1. Figure 2: Scrum blends all development activities into each iteration, adapting to discovered realities at fixed intervals. The greatest potential benefit of Scrum is for complex work involving knowledge creation and collaboration, such as new product development. Doing Scrum, or Pretending to Do Scrum? Product Owner. Scrum Training Series: Free Scrum Master Training. Scrum Kompakt - Scrum Kompakt. Scrum Breakfast.