The professional ScrumMaster's handbook : a collection of tips, tricks, and war stories to help the professional ScrumMaster break the chains of traditional organization and management / Stacia Viscardi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Viscardi, Stacia.

Series:

Professional Expertise Distilled

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Scrum (Computer software development)--Handbooks, manuals, etc.

Scrum (Computer software development).

Project management.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (336 p.)

Edition:

1st edition

Place of Publication:

Birmingham, U.K. : Packt Publishing, c2013.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

text file

Biography/History:

Viscardi Stacia: Stacia Viscardi is an Agile coach, Certified Scrum Trainer, and organizational transformation expert, devoted to creating energized and excited teams that delight their customers and inspire others. With humble beginnings in Port Arthur, Texas, Stacia found her niche as a Manufacturing Project Manager in the early nineties; she landed in the technology world in 1999 and never looked back. In 2003 she became the sixty-second Certified ScrumMaster (there are now over 200, 000! ), and founded AgileEvolution in 2006. She has helped companies such as Cisco Systems, Martha Stewart Living, Primavera, DoubleClick, Google, Razorfish, MyPublisher, Washington Post, and many others find their way to agility. Co-author of the Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility, Stacia has taught Agile in 17 countries and is active in the ScrumAlliance as a CST and trusted community advisor. When she is not doing Agile stuff, she is training for a marathon or other long race or spending cozy nights on the sofa with her husband Chris, and dogs Jax and Cobi. A self-proclaimed process nerd, she loves helping teams and organizations discover the Scrum/XP/Lean mash-ups that enables focused, flexible, and fast delivery of products. She created the blog HelloScrum to share knowledge, tips, and tricks with Scrum practitioners, and co-founded KnowAgile, an Agile testing website. Stacia has co-authored The Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility with Michele Sliger (2008, Addison-Wesley).

Summary:

Focusing on the ScrumMaster role and responsibilities, this book presents solutions and ideas for common problems, improving the overall methodology of a ScrumMaster's approach.The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook is for anybody who wishes to be a true ScrumMaster as the role was originally intended - a fearless, professional, change facilitator. This book extends your working knowledge of Scrum to explore other avenues and ways of thinking to help teams and organizations reach their full potential.

Contents:

Intro

The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook

Table of Contents

Credits

Foreword

About the Author

Acknowledgment

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more

Why Subscribe?

Free Access for Packt account holders

Instant Updates on New Packt Books

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Scrum - A Brief Review of the Basics (and a Few Interesting Tidbits)

The problem

A brief history

The underlying concepts of Scrum

Complex adaptive systems

The empirical process control barstool

Scrum core values

Scrum is inherently lean

Scrum roles

Scrum team

Product owner

ScrumMaster

Brief review of the Scrum framework

Sprint planning

Daily scrum meeting

Sprint review meeting

Sprint retrospective

Release planning (optional)

Scrum artifacts

The product backlog

The sprint backlog

The product increment

Visible progress

Release backlog and burndown

Sprint burndown

Dysfunctions or true constraints?

Is your team ready for Scrum?

Summary

Recommended reading

2. Release Planning - Tuning Product Development

Start at the beginning - product backlog

Focus product backlogs on users and values

Engage the team early

Prioritization can be useful for other things

Release planning - when will you set your features free?

Timing of releases and release planning

Don't create the software big dig

Integrate early and often to mitigate risks

Make buffers visible

How to conduct a release planning event?

Do your homework!

Facilitating the release planning meeting

Participants

Agenda

The physical space.

Definition of Done

Release planning output

Release planning summary

3. Sprint Planning - Fine-tune the Sprint Commitment

Sprint planning basics

Preparing for sprint planning

High-octane stories

Help the product owner prepare for sprint planning

Physical space

Visualize the meeting

Scratchpad, script, and agenda

Running the sprint planning meeting

Part I - the What and the Why

Different types of stories

Part II - the How

Understanding capacity

Talk first, then identify sprint tasks

Anyone tasks, expert tasks, and pairing

Sprint buffering

It helps to see time

Team members should talk with each other

Don't over-facilitate

Sample sprint planning checklist

Commit!

Improving sprint planning

4. Sprint! Visible, Collaborative, and Meaningful Work

How the Scrum team should work

Working in a sprint

Sprints shouldn't be just Sprints

Beware of the old mind-set creeping into the new paradigm

Estimating work

The misunderstood daily scrum meeting

Three questions

What did I do since yesterday's meeting?

What will I do by tomorrow's meeting?

What blocks me from being able to do my work?

Do we have to meet every day?

Who's allowed to attend the daily scrum?

Look ahead at the next sprint's product backlog items

It takes a village - communicating during the sprint

Individual influences to the work of the sprint

Factor 1 - Openness

Factor 2 - Conscientiousness

Factor 3 - Extroversion, are you an innie or an outie?

Factor 4 - Agreeableness

Factor 5 - Neuroticism

What's 'Norm'al for one team is not for another

A corporate culture and its impact on teamwork

Team assumptions about management

Corporate mind-set opposes the Agile manifesto

Fear of empowerment.

Employees feel like headcount

5. The End? Improving Product and Process One Bite at a Time

Sprint review - inspecting and adapting the product

Product owner acceptance

Prior to the sprint review

During the sprint review

Set the context

Give a visual

Keep your stories straight

Keep everyone focused

Does a Scrum team demo incomplete work?

See the whole

Possible outcomes of a sprint review

Don't surprise the product owner

Sprint reviews for continuous flow frameworks

Sprint review - a time for collaboration and trust

Sprint retrospective - inspecting and adapting processes and teamwork

SCRUM is not an acronym for Serious Crud Required by Upper Management

Unearthing information for improvement

Set the safety

Recall sprint events

Ask - What worked well for us? What didn't work so well for us?

Who owns the improvement?

Prioritize and assign action items

Make REAL action items

Some different retrospective techniques

Change the scenery

Visualize the future

Team cave art

Retrospective yoga/meditation

Why should we care about reviews and retrospectives?

6. The Criticality of Real-time Information

Yesterday's news is old news

Getting the message

Through the Scrum microscope

1x magnification - product vision/initiatives

2x magnification - the product roadmap

4x magnification - the release plan

Release the burndown baseline

Baseline with updates

Team velocity chart

A Gantt chart in an Agile project

8x magnification - the product backlog

What does your user want?

16x magnification - the sprint

User stories in sprint planning

Acceptance criteria

Definition of Done

Sprint goals

Sprint reviews.

32x magnification - tasks, daily scrums, and other information

Daily broadcasts

Daily scrums

Sprint backlogs

Sprint burndown chart

What burns down can also burn up

64x magnification - read all about it, in the team room!

Monitor this!

Scrum microscope summary

When physical taskboards and conversations aren't enough

Invite stakeholders to sprint reviews

Create and distribute reports

Waste and obstacle removal

7. Scrum Values Expose Fear, Dysfunction, and Waste

Prepare for change aches and pains

The five core values of Scrum

Scrum value #1 - Courage

Free the spark

Scrum value #2 - Commitment

Commitment exposes fear of dedicated, cross-functional Scrum teams

Expert-to-Task or ETT model of human resource allocation

Team-to-Backlog or the TTB model of human team allocation

What do we do about commitment issues?

Scrum value #3 - Openness

Secrecy and what to do about it

Openness exposes truth about capacity and demand

Openness exposes a need for slowing down in order to eventually speed up

Scrum value #4 - Focus

Lack of focus and personal control = missed commitments

Focus reveals waste

Focus reveals failure to understand small increments

Scrum value #5 - Respect

Power, position, and control and what to do about it

8. Everyday Leadership for the ScrumMaster and Team

Everyday leadership

First, what kind of personality do you have?

Learn to look into your reflection

Portrait of a leader

Selfless, confident, and accountable

Open to feedback

Builds trust

Leads with Theory Y

Honest

How to become a better ScrumMaster

Empower yourself and others!

Help others visualize the desired state

Influence others

Roll up your sleeves and servant-lead

Listen more than talk

Plant seeds.

Choose to be happy, focus on the positive

Know your communication style

Loud or quiet?

Direct versus passive

Switzerland or Supreme Court judge

Other ScrumMaster characteristics

Procrastinator or proactive

Teacher

Student

Scrum buddy

Journal/walk up a hill

Which ScrumMaster persona are you?

Techie Taj

Bossy Betty

Clammed Up Carl

Thundering Thea

Officer Sophie

9. Shaping the Agile Organization

Will Agile cause a ripple, or a tsunami?

How does your organization measure up to the Scrum values?

What if the Scrum values score is low?

Culture change requires a multi-faceted approach

Illustrating the need for and direction of change

Pre-agility survey

Waste score

Old-fashioned interviews

The Agile organization chart and roles matrix

Traditional roles in an Agile organization

Scaling an Agile mind-set

Self-actualizing individuals create an Agile organization

Goals and metrics that motivate self-actualizing

Person has a say in it

Understanding what demotivates

Standardizing measurements

Frequent, multi-perspective feedback

CEO scorecard

Don't go it alone

Avoiding Scrum as a panacea

Why change? What blocks?

Immunity to change

Face it, Scrum might not be for your organization

10. Scrum - Large and Small

Scrum stops the resource shell game

Small Scrum

Big programs, small Scrum

When Scrum gets big-dysfunction or constraint?

Challenge 1: Fearful ScrumMasters

Challenge 2: Late integration

Challenge 3: Communication across multiple teams

Challenge 4: Big picture metrics

Customer happiness

Time to Market

Quality

Employee morale

Challenge 5: Not done - the root of all evil

Challenge 6: Too few product owners.

Challenge 7: Scaling too much, too fast.

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from title page (ebrary, viewed May 22, 2013).

ISBN:

9781680153651

168015365X

9781299485952

1299485952

9781849688031

1849688036

OCLC:

849934176