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If you want to do it in Jira btw you dont have to have estimated everything at all btw. Check out "roadmaps for Jira" plugin. You can add your features and your stories underneath it, also if they are not estimated. It generates a gannt-chart like view.
https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/features/roadmaps
I use it all the time, it works nicely.
Tasks are not very useful to keep around after a sprint is completed. Stories, Tech Reqs on the other hand are. They can be useful for changelogs, sprint history and other things.
You can also use software tools, our company uses YouTrack. I hear that JIRA is also popular. YouTrack provides a free version for up to 10 users, so you can try it home.
Read/listen to 'The Lean Startup' by Eric Ries. It's more geared towards Product Managers, but there are some concepts that everyone involved w/agile Product development should be aware of.
Ask questions, and don't beat up the dev team when a story doesn't turn out exactly as you wanted it. Instead, use each instance as a lesson for writing better acceptance criteria in the future. If you're unapproachable, it's going to be harder to foster the two way conversations that should be taking place.
I'm using Tuleap tool. It's a free open source tool both for Scrum and kanban boards. It supports ticket tracking as well where each individual can enter work in hours or in points. https://www.tuleap.org/features#feature-agile
You should be good to go. If you feel like reading this as well it will help you deepen your understanding of the scrum guide from a different perspective.
Best of luck!
I’ve heard this intro book isn’t bad (though I haven’t read it).
Scrum: a Ultimate beginner’s guide to learn and master scrum agile framework.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DV9QMJH/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_8KBpFbMCC16X9
To be honest, there are some decent YouTube overviews. Here’s a random one:
I am happy to chat or answer questions about Scrum, too. Just PM me. (I am a scrum master)
Similar to another thread about passing the PSM 1 Exam, the Scrum Guide is the most important to understanding the framework itself.
Understanding the agile manifesto and its principles is huge, because truly grasping the why is the difference between doing agile, and being agile.
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is superb.
The course doesn't have any prerequisites and it doesn't have any assessment, so in general there is no need for preparation. Reading the Scrum Guide will definitely help but apart from that, nothing else comes to mind.
There are a lot of books on Product Ownership but none specific for the course. The Professional Product Owner that u/bazzarillo suggested is an amazing book - I highly recommend it.
An earlier posting by the same guys on the same topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_MEMsEqRHw
The book that changed my mind on this: Actionable Agile Metrics
In this book, Vacanti argues that velocity is a collection of estimates, and being estimates, they were probably wrong. Just because you estimated something as a 3, and you finished it, doesn’t mean you did a 3. It may have turned out to be a 5 or a 1. So Velocity is an historically inaccurate record of work completion.
Cycle time, by contrast, is a fact. You know the date/time that you started and finished the item, and you can quickly come up with an average for your work, or segment by work item types, and therefore predict completion and provide an SLA to your clients of your team that predicts work completion times assuming you control WIP and use a kanban system in your sprint to manage the sprint backlog.
Combining Kanban and Scrum (it is not Scrumban - that is not a thing) yields many positive results. Scrum.org even has a certification and a guide for using Professional Scrum with Kanban (PSK) that can be an excellent read and a great way to level up a team.
Looks like a good intro for someone who wants to dig deeper in the subject (like me!)
Thanks for the insights, we love this kind of article in our team, we also wrote on the subject and we'd love your feedback: https://zenkit.com/en/blog/kanban-vs-scrum/
And gain some experience and certifications as well, it will help.
If you like this subject as much as we do, check the article we wrote about, hope it will make you like it even more :)
https://zenkit.com/en/blog/kanban-vs-scrum/
How much of a real product owner are you?
That’s the best question for anyone in the PO accountability to answer. McGreal gives five levels of PO:
1 Scribe. You basically “write the stories”.
2 Proxy. You’re there because the real PO refuses to play scrum. You execute someone else’s decisions and have no authority of your own.
—— above are IT people — below are business people
3 Business Rep. at least now as a proxy you bring some of the insights of decision making from the actual product owner somewhere up the food chain. This is better than someone from IT who was a project manager doing the job.
4 sponsor. You’re the person the requirements come from. These are your decisions. When you are in backlog refinement or spring planning, decisions come quickly because you can make them. You have real authority.
5 entrepreneur. You own the budget for the team. You’re the real product owner.
So the question now becomes do you wish to develop into and toward an entrepreneur, or do you wish to convince the organization to push decision making down so that the entrepreneur role lives with the person who holds the product owner accountability?
The PSPO II course from Scrum.org will probably do you a lot of good. scrum.org’s view of a product owner is that the product owner owns the budget for the team. Anything less than that slows down decision making and limits the scrum teams interactions with a real business.
You could also read the professional product owner by Dan McGreal. You’ll find it very educational.
I'd recommend picking up a copy of Lyssa Adkin's Coaching Agile Teams. There are sections and sidebars specifically geared toward people transitioning to agile coaching positions from technical lead or project management roles.
I'd also recommend going well beyond Scrum. Understanding the underlying values and principles of Agile and Lean, along with other methodologies and frameworks, will go a long way to helping the team in developing the most appropriate way of working.
There are some great books out there you should consider reading to up your retrospect game.
Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great https://www.amazon.com/dp/0977616649/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_i_60X6SV4GVJSTHDKN5T4F
Retrospectives Antipatterns https://www.amazon.com/dp/013682336X/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_i_S8WF48VBN16BKFNS59Z5
Just started my first PO role really recommend this book. I already had a scrum background but this fills in some of the gaps for me
https://www.amazon.com/INSPIRED-Create-Tech-Products-Customers/dp/1119387507
Nothing like a good old YT video (why is it not embedded, tho ?)
We're big fans of this subject in our team, we actually wrote an article about it and we'd love your comments:
In my case about one month from beginning reading the Scrum Guide and finishing the exam. If to be honest 29 days.
Regarding the links here it is: 1 -read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Professional-Scrum-Coaches-Challenges/dp/0134841522 This book was written before Scrum Guide update but anyway it is extremely valuable 2 - used psm simulator and course (course is free) from vokrerdon - https://www.volkerdon.com/courses/psm1 3 - used scrum.org articles
It’s available here.
Is the PSM more difficult than the CSM? Absolutely, definitely not more recognized though see here:
PSM: http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=psm+scrum&l=
CSM: http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=scrum+csm&l=
The higher level Scrum Alliance certs are certainly much more difficult and respected. It has a lot more traction than Scrum.org and probably will for the foreseeable future.
A good question that is a bit tricky to answer. I agree that Scrum is Agile but not all Agile is Scrum, indeed.
It's like the mindset and the methodology, if you may.
We wrote an article on the subject, hope it will help on that matter:
https://zenkit.com/en/blog/scrum-101-an-introduction-to-scrum-project-management/
I used this book to prepare for PSM-I and then scored so well that I decided to give PSM-II a try and passed that too: https://www.amazon.com/Scrum-Narrative-Exam-Guide-All-ebook/dp/B018JXYRNA - beware that it contains a few errors, but if you study the scrum guide as well, they’re easy to spot. It actually enhanced my understanding to think these things over.
If you want a deep dive on this idea, you should read Cal Newport's book A World Without Email. He makes the same argument that you're making - that email and chat services dominate the working model for most knowledge workers, but are a poor way of getting things done.
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A lot of his recommendations actually lead to really common patterns for Scrum practitioners:
- Document all work and communication on a ticket so that all relevant information is in one place and you aren't constantly context-switching to whatever the latest email/IM is. (I*t's worth noting As much as people hate tickets, this perspective helped me actually appreciate Story cards*).
- Explicitly define and follow your working model, otherwise you'll revert back to frantically answering emails and IMs without getting a lot accomplished
- Similar to above, maintain good WIP limits. Only start a few things at a time. If someone messages you about a different body of work, log the conversation against the ticket so that all the context is in one place, but be thoughtful about how and when you start on it.
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It's a cool book. It starts with the question: "Why is there so much email in the world" and builds up to a lot of Scrum principles from a totally different perspective.
If you decide to go with Trello, I've collected some resources on how to use Trello for Scrum here https://trello.com/b/VliA4Xzm/scrum. That may be useful.
It is a great tool (and free) but if you're looking to add multiple dates to a card it doesn't support that. You could possibly add the various tasks (dev/QA) as checklist items and include the expected date there? Or look for a plugin which give the ability to add time estimates to the cards.
I guess a meta question would be why you care what the date estimates are for dev/test on cards within the sprint? Do you really need that? I don't know of any online Scrum tools that support that workflow to be honest.
I really like this book for getting started. Gave me a lot of good tips. Mural has also become indispensable in working as a team. Great tool.
Wow. Bob, Thanks! I am absolutely flattered! I added a "buy me a coffee" donation link in the footer, https://www.buymeacoffee.com/pokersizing. Donations are most definitely welcome but more than that please share any feedback you may have after using it! Thanks again!
Hi,
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It depends on the number of people using it, but I'd recommend the free options for YouTrack by JetBrains https://www.jetbrains.com/youtrack/, or Jira from Atlassian https://www.atlassian.com/try/cloud/signup?bundle=jira-software&edition=free.
You wouldn't happen to work on Kendrick St, would you?
I've operated in Kanban and Scrum as a Software QA Engineer. Added bonus I've worked at the same company in both Waterfall and Agile. And although I currently work in Financial Services I have worked in the game design arena in the past.
At the moment your company is not fundamentally working in Agile/Scrum, at least not the way you've mapped it out in the screen shot. You're actually in a hybrid Waterfall/Scrum setup. If your teams consist of Design Team Member, UI/UX Team Member, Art team member, and Code Team Member, then stories should be broken down enough so that in one sprint ALL of those aspects can be completed. In every industry other than game design testing would be included too, but I know that's too much to ask for. Because aspects of the features are crossing sprint boundaries, then I would say that you're sliding toward Waterfall territory.
Design team members aren't really operating within a sprint. They shouldn't be considered 'DEV TEAM', and their work wouldn't get counted as 'story points', at least not at the company I'm with at the moment. They might have a way of tracking their own tasks, but from a sprint planning perspective those wouldn't be tracked on the Teams Jira board. It looks like you've got some Backlog Refinement and Sprint Planning mixed into a Sprint. Freeing the concept of refinement and planning from the sprint itself, might help elevate some of the issues.
There's a reason that in this picture, the Refinement and Planning are not inside the loop of the sprint.
I have no suggestions for what to do about including Art in a dev sprint... It should probably be separate. But there are reasons why I'm not in the Game Dev profession anymore, despite having to drive past Kendrick st to get to my office.
I also replied to your question in r/agile, but wanted to repost here to make sure you and others could add to the conversation in both places. It really does depend on what your needs are and what tool mix is a good fit for your situation.
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I think which tool you choose depends on what you are trying to do and what your needs are.
I completely agree that Windows Teams isn't a good platform for retros. However, there are so many great tools that have different strengths and benefits.
As mentioned, Miro is great for experienced teams with a great facilitator who has the time to set up the experience before bringing the team in. I would recommend Retrium for a team that is learning/early in their team maturity, or if your facilitator doesn't have the time to pre-create the environment for the team.
If you have specific needs or follow up questions, please let us know so we can help find you the right tool/mix of tools for your needs. All the best!
You could try Tixit. Its free and lightweight, and has infinite levels of subtasks. I don't know any other PM tool that allows you to easily manage more than 2 levels of tickets. Check it out at https://tixit.me
I started using Metroretro a few months ago and it's really nice, except for the ability to export retro items I think it covers everything you listed. Also it's free and it comes with some useful templates
I really like https://miro.com/ and https://www.mural.co/.
They have very similar features, such as customizable boards, voting, timers, etc.
My team started on Miro and moved to Mural and we’ve been really happy with both.
Story points are relative. When you estimate, you should be asking "Is this bigger or smaller than this other thing we did before?"
Not, "How long will it take?" or "What percentage of a sprint?"
Humans are bad at estimating time https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-estimate-time/ so we take out the time portion and use relative sizing to help us in an attempt to be more accurate.
I would agree with you but understand that when Ken Schwaber, one of the founders of scrum, began teaching Scrum he had a class called Agile Project Management with Scrum. For the majority of people who have no idea what scrum this is probably the best way to introduce the idea, even though, yes, it's not really a Project Management framework, but a manage "complex products and services as a team" framework.
For the basics and such I found this helpful and to the point:
Scrum Narrative and PSM Exam Guide: All-in-one Guide for Professional Scrum Master (PSM 1) Certificate Assessment Preparation
Thank you, outside of the guide, are there any books you'd recommend for additional narrative or exam prep? I was looking at this one which has descent reviews. https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1521475466/ref=ox_sc_act_image_1?smid=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB&psc=1
I only have a hard copy; but here's a link:
https://www.amazon.com/Coaching-Agile-Teams-ScrumMasters-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321637704
Ok, you can start with some reading in books.
A suggestion: Scrum a Pocket guide - Gunther Verheyen
If you like a good novel (about DevOps): https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262592
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If you going for training, go for PSM 1 first (prefer that your boss is paying :)). This will give you a lot of background theory on Scrum, specially if you participate in a class. If being Product Owner is more suiting late, you have the advantage of having the theoretical background already.
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Good luck in your journey! :)
Cheers, Johan
I do a set of activities as discussed in Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby.
Mad, Sad, Glad is a really great activity to focus the team's thoughts and Gather data. However, if you can define a full set of activities to draw insights and then add Spikes/Enabler to your Backlog, it will really help the team. From the time I started doing these activities, the team performance improved dramatically and I have stuck with the template. If you are interested do read about it in an article about the template that I have written.
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Kanban will make things worse when you can't even get Scrum running.
For a starter: Just follow the Scrum Guide and fix all issues together with the developers which prevent them from working efficient and happy. That's it. Basically. There are also customers. External and internal.
Be aware that "fixing" issues is hard. Nearly impossible. Find the root causes. Think out of the box. You'll need everybody's help.
Do you have cross-functional teams? No? At least try to keep communications paths short (both in time and distance).
Also try to get an experienced Scrum Master and/or read the following books:
- Peopleware (especially the stuff about Flow and Team Jell)
- The Scrum Guide
- Scrum - Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
- Planing Extreme Programming
- Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
- User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product
- Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews
- Toyota Kata
- Lean from the Trenches
- Lean Thinking
- The Birth of Lean
- Taichi Ohno's Workplace Management
- The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization
> Agile is a trend that came out of web consulting
Agile came out of Scrum, which came out of Lean, which came out TPS, which is the same as TQM, which came out of Scientific Management.
Of course, it's not as easy as that. We also need to throw in DeMacro's and Listener's "Peopleware", Rapid Prototyping, the studies at Hawthorne in the 1920ties, 30ties, Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow", Senge's "The 5th Disciple", Ducker's texts about knowledge workers, Csíkszentmihályi's Flow, Ohno's "Workplace Management", Coplien's Organizational Patterns, Nonaka's Learning Organisations, etc.
> Scrum is falsely sold
I can agree with that.
> Hopefully this Agile and Scrum concept will soon disappear
Your are lucky. The name is changing back into "Lean" these days. Which is taking "Continuous Improvement" (that's what Scrum's retrospectives are about) and "Respect for People" (that's what the Agile manifesto is about) to their extremes.
Hi Bowelman,
I used Mplaza to pass the PSM1 a few days ago. From the videos, sample questions and the 3 exams, I scored a 77/80. I also recommend the book below too. I read the authors book on PSM1, which helped me too.
https://mplaza.pm/professional-scrum-product-owner-preparation/
Mike Cohn - User Stories Applied is probably the most practical agile book I've ever read https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/books/user-stories-applied.
Also the OG: Kent Beck - XP Explained https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Programming-Explained-Embrace-Change/dp/0321278658
Scrum masters can come from any background. Having PM knowledge is helpful but not required. A scrum master is a guide and coach for the team. They are responsible for ensuring the team is following the rules of scrum, facilitating their meetings, and overall helping the team on the path to high performance.
Understanding the rules of scrum and the agile principles are more important. In your first SM role you will likely be following the scrum guide as closely as possible but the importance will be in understanding why the practices exist. What is important in the daily scrum? Why do we ask the 3 questions? What is the real goal in that meeting? etc... Eventually guiding and facilitating becomes more about the principles, outcomes, and goals than the rules of scrum but that comes with time.
Pay attention to the people on the team. I suggest looking into some personality or team-working books as a scrum master should be in tune enough to understand the work being done (technical and business purposes) and how the people work together. Conflicts amongst team members can be a difficult impediment to remove.
> Also, my hope is that the two days of SM training (and hopefully certification) would get into it deeply enough that this 'new' approach would be super clear to me. Wondering more how likely it'd be that potential employees would see that too.
The thing about agile is that it's easy to implement, but hard to master. I'm not certified, but I've been a scrum master for the last 5 months. I really suggest The Scrum Field Guide. It has helped me through some stormy waters. (https://www.amazon.ca/Scrum-Field-Guide-Advice-Beyond/dp/0133853624/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1488072918&sr=8-2&keywords=scrum+field+guide)
Does your development team already use agile/scrum? If not, it could be hard to get them to change.
Excellent practice of software delivery in Scrum is an extremely difficult skill to master. Don't expect easy answers, but seek out a rigorous course of mastery. Be wary of those who flatter with easy paths to success and cherish those who challenge your ego.
Step one, and don't ignore this:
This is your first mentor. I recommend reading it once a day for 2 weeks. Ask someone to quiz you on it until you know it back wards and forwards. This is the first form, like when learning a martial art. Think on it deeply and concentrate first on what it says to do. Then just do it. If you have questions, give your sensei the benefit of the doubt and just get good at understanding and executing the basic forms.
After that, explore the "why's" behind the roles, events, artifacts and rules. For reading I recommend:
At this stage, it's imperative to find a mentor, someone who has progressed through this "why" stage and can guide you efficiently in this next stage of learning and will help you avoid harmful pitfalls. Look online, in forums, maybe this sub, local meetups, name brand web sites like Scrum.org and keep looking until you find this person. All people will approach this stage of mastery and have the temptation to proclaim, "I've got this!" when they don't. They are on the edge of true understanding and wisdom.
Beyond this is true mastery and expertise. This is where folks tend to write their own playbooks and is beyond the scope of this suggestion. Feel free to reach out to me with any specific questions you may have.
I just finished reading The Scrum Field Guide (version 2) by Mitch Lacey(https://www.amazon.ca/Scrum-Field-Guide-Advice-Beyond/dp/0133853624/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1488072378&sr=8-2&keywords=scrum+field+guide)
It was fantastic. Picked it up about 3 months after my team started running agile scrum/XP. The first few chapters actually discussed a few of the issues I had worked through with my team. The rest seemed to address things that hadn't come up yet (some won't, some won't because I'm aware of it now). Definitely worth the buy.
> Also, my hope is that the two days of SM training (and hopefully certification) would get into it deeply enough that this 'new' approach would be super clear to me. Wondering more how likely it'd be that potential employees would see that too.
I totally recommend doing the CSM training (and not SM training - this could be poorly interpreted :D ) but this is not sufficient on its own. You can flavor it with some readings such as Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time that gives a lot of context on Scrum.
I'm sure you will pass the certification with some efforts.
I second meet ups and I have found that the best resources from from those recommendations.
For book I absolutely love Badass: making users awesome in terms of how to think about product development.