by Jeffrey Ries
Parts of a Scrum
To understand how Scrum works, one must know the parts of the framework and the people involved. The best thing about this is that experience is not needed.
No need to have previous knowledge before you can begin to use Scrum. The only requirement is a place to help create ideas. That could be a whiteboard or software such as Trello. Below are the parts of Scrum.
Product Owner. This is the person who has the best interest of the user and can say what he or she wants to get in the final product. The product owner is in charge of creating a Backlog. A Backlog represents a list of requirements or tasks for the final product.
Sprint. This is a timeframe when a team is supposed to complete several tasks.
Daily Scrum. This refers to the daily updates given by the teams.
Retrospective.
This should help you realize that Scrum is very easy to learn because you don’t need to have special tools. The only trick lies in mastering the lingo and sticking to the guidelines.
Basic Scrum Framework
Remember that no previous experience or special training is required to start using Scrum. You can teach yourself. It is easy to learn the basics of Scrum. The hardest part is mastering the techniques. Experts of Scrum believe that one can learn the rules of Scrum in 10 minutes, but it would take years for one to become an expert in Scrum.
The Principles of Agile
There are 12 major principles that can be used to manage a project. These principles work best with Scrum.
Customer satisfaction is the leading goal and it is realized through a continuous and rapid delivery of a product or software.
Changing environments or circumstances are embraced at any point in the stage to help deliver the best product to the customer.
A service or product is delivered at a higher frequency.
Stakeholders and developers work hand-in-hand every day.
Both the stakeholder and team members should remain inspired to ensure the best results in the project.
Physical meetings are the best to find out the progress of a project.
A final functional product is the general measure of success.
Sustainable development is realized through an Agile process where both the stakeholders and the development team can maintain a constant pace.
Agility is realized through a subsequent focus on technical excellence and correct design.
Simplicity is a key aspect.
A self-organizing team mostly develops the right architecture and designs to fulfill the requirements.
Regular meetings help enhance efficiency and fine-tune a product.
Best Scrum Master Skills One Should Know to help Steer Digital Innovation in the Company
A scrum master is an important person in the entire Agile process. This person is responsible for guiding the team to apply the best practices and remove impediments. Although there is a “Master”, these people aren’t masters actually. They are a servant-leader and help serve the product owner and service team. This means that there will be a need for a complete change of the mindset. To help propel digital innovation forward, the best scrum master skills that anyone should have is the ability to change and constantly be ready to improve both yourself and your team members.
Master these 3 Scrum Master Skills and become a Scrum Hero
Listen
Usually, Type A personality enjoys taking leadership and direct people on what they need to do. There are times when you may feel that you need to stand up and give directions for things to flow well. For instance, you could be the first to speak and provide directions for the scrum meetings. Maybe you already aware of the best way you can accomplish things, and sometimes you just know.
But the focus of Agile development is defined on the team finding a common goal and delivering the end product. The key thing is to get the team to work both effectively and efficiently in the best way possible. It is hard to realize your goal when you are unable to listen and learn from the team members. It is very critical for one to listen to some of the problems that the team comes up with, the suggestions they put forward, and some of the improvements they would like to introduce.
How to listen effectively
Most people aren’t natural listeners and the best way to start is to act like a good listener. Make sure that you don’t speak until the other person has made their point. Avoid interrupting a person while they are speaking. Secondly, stop arguing with others silently in your head or plan on how you are going to respond. Finally, try and repeat whatever they said to make sure that you understand everything they wanted to say. Practice your listening skills every day with a one-to-one conversation and then you can advance into the scrum meetings.
Coach
The team you guide and direct is the most important organ of the Agile process. Therefore, you have the responsibility to ensure every individual on the team grows and develops. Any time you discover a developer struggling, avoid to brush it under the rug. Come out and help them. Guide them using tips through each problem and help them achieve whatever that they are doing. Make use of a one-to-one time in the meeting. This style of coaching has been found to be important at the start of a project. Also, it will help one avoid problems that might arise later in the project. If you find a person on the team that is causing a given problem, address this issue early. Do not be afraid or shy to talk about it. Remember. A small problem ignored today may turn to be a bigger problem tomorrow.
How to coach people in the most effective way?
The goal of coaching is to generate feedback to team members and individuals. Do this as many times as you can. Has one developer or the whole team done something good? Well, praise them in private or public depending on their personality traits. Do you find something that an individual can improve? Express it to the members. Begin by stating what went wrong, and creative suggestions on how to make it good. When you learn to give suggestions or feedback every time, team members will learn to expect and appreciate it. While feedback becomes a habit, team members will begin to take it personally or even shy away from it.
Facilitate
Some of the goals of a scrum master are to facilitate meetings and coach people on the right practices. This means that you are not supposed to direct other people on what they should do. The team should work collectively at every meeting. The best facilitators are those that no one notices that he or she were present in the meeting.
How to facilitate in the most effective way?
One of the major skills of effective facilitators is good listening skills. They ask brilliant questions to help them understand the perspective of everyone and steer the group forward. Good facilitators remain neutral and don’t favor anyone’s opinion. They have great confidence and believe in themselves. They have this belief that an agreement will be attained and solutions found while in the group. It is important to know that no one was born a facilitator and therefore anyone can learn how to be a great facilitator.
In summary, a Scrum master needs to be a hard working. In addition, it is always a great thing to see a team work together and realize the results in a faster way. Although the above skills are important for Scrum Masters, every individual has the role to facilitate, listen and assist others.
Chapter 5: Turning Your Organization Agile
The big question is how to turn a whole organization Agile. Usually, in an organization that has fully implemented Agile practices, it is the role of the manager to ensure that all members remain committed to their duties and ability. Once every team member is dedicated to their tasks, a greater value is delivered to the customer. In addition, the manager should have complete confidence in the action taken by those in contact with the customer. The manager should also trust his or her team to do things in the right way. Agile is not like a top-down or bottom-up approach. The major focus is on delivering the correct value to the customers. In short, the customer is the boss and not the manager.
On the other hand, the manager in the traditional model has a different responsibility than a manager in the Agile methodology. In this model, the role of the manager is to determine what has to be done and instruct the employees to do it. In addition, the managers oversee that the employee completes the work based on all the instructions outlined. This model assumes that the duty of the employee is to follow instructions and trust the decisions of the manager. The main goal of this model is to generate money for the firm. Therefore, the manager is the boss.
In many organizations, the manager is the boss. Therefore, this makes it hard to implement Agile practices. Any efforts taken are thwarted down because of continuous friction between the managers and the Agile team. For that reason, letting team members adopt Agile practices in these type of organization becomes difficult. At most, it will never be realized.
The reason why partial fixes aren’t the best solution
There has been reported tension between the management and the adoption of Agile practices in many organizations. To reduce this tension, it is important to change the role of the Agile team leader so that it reflects that of an Agile methodology. This is done by creating a new job description for the project supervisor. However, this approach only delivers a temporary solution. Below are some reasons why it is not permanent.
In a big organization, there are different managerial ranks. Redefining the job description of the manager means that the friction between the Agile team and the top hierarchy was only reduced by a single layer. It is very hard for the friction to end when the top managers in the hierarchy still embrace the traditional leadership.
Another reason for the looming friction is because top managers in big firms have one purpose, and that is to generate money for the company shareholders and executives. This kind of approach is called maximizing the shareholders’ value. An approach that is different from the goal of Agile methodology. Remember, the concept of Agile projects is to deliver value to the customer. Generation of money is the result but not the main goal with Agile practices. For that reason, unless a permanent solution is found, it will always be difficult to implement agility in these organizations.
Why does the top rank dislike Agile?
Is it possible to have the top managers of an organization accept Agile without discussing the goal of the organization? The answer is no. Top managers use command and control approach to address the creation of large profits and increase the stock price. The right solution is to solve the tension between an Agile team and the top management.
The best way: The creative economy
Top companies such as Apple, Zara, and Google do things in a different way. These companies use the Creative Economy. For that reason, they have redefined the goal of the entire organization and shifted the focus from the shareholder to the customer. In these companies, top executives embrace the customer-value. In short, they are Agile-friendly.
Since they have adopted Agile practices, money is the end result but not the main goal. The major goal is to satisfy the customer. Google and Apple are a great reference to say that Agile methodology has delivered profitable results.
Attempting to resolve the friction between Agile and the traditional management in a rational way is very difficult. It is hard because the traditional role of management has a deep-rooted attitude, views, and values about how the world operates. This contributes to the corporate culture. Past experience shows that changing the corporate culture using methodologies, decisions, and descriptions can be hard.
However, it is important to stop managers from expressing a boss mentality and start to embrace Agility. One must reach out to managers on a deeper emotional level through experiences. This has a chance to cause managers to begin to appreciate the different attitudes, values, and understand how the world operates. The manager should build a positive attitude with the customer.
In most cases, this is not easy to realize because the role of a manager seems to be permanently engraved in the culture of the organization. Part of this culture is to protect a set of processes, goals, and values. This means that even though a manager would wish not to act like a boss and uphold the customer, the existing culture makes it hard to change.
The small aspects of a culture are combined to prevent any efforts to change it. Some individual fixes can try to change it but it will be hard because of other aspects of the organization. It is critical to know that this is not like a house which one can remodel one section and leave it that way. No. An organization is like an interlock of patterns. To shift into Agile calls for five major fixes:
• Instead of aiming to make money for the organization, let the main focus be to satisfy the customer.
• Rather than having those who perform the task report to the bosses, the work should be done in a self-organizing team. In addition, the management should ensure that it does not check to verify if those meant to perform a given task have done so. It should aim to facilitate those who are to perform that task.
• Allow work to be carried out based on the Agile principles instead of the work getting coordinated by the bureaucracy rules, reports, and plans.
• Rather than a preoccupation defined by predictability and efficiency, the major values should be continuous improvement and transparency.
• Elimination of a one-way top-down command and replacing it with a horizontal conversation.
Changing the organizational culture
By choosing to apply these five fixes to help implement Agile in a different organization, the end result is that the corporate culture acquires a new image. Don’t forget that this is not easy to do. It requires that the company resources are integrated.
Overall, the best strategy to use that has been found to deliver success is to start with the tools of leadership. Some of these tools include control systems, a vision of the future, and the tools of power.
The Importance of Leadership in Storytelling
The motivational aspect needed to change the corporate culture across the world depends on the storytelling ability. Leadership storytelling is more than just getting things done. It is the correct path for leaders to embrace change. Instead of calling for change by producing propositional arguments that may create a lot of arguments, leaders have an opportunity to build credibility using a narrative. Once they demonstrate a great belief in these narratives, the narratives spread and develop creativity, interaction and transformation.
Storytelling is an amazing tool that can perfectly deal with the challenge of changing the corporate culture. It turns abstract figures into a compelling picture. Remember that every great business has a story to tell.
Chapter: 6 Principles of Agile Plus Agile Manifesto
It is just difficult to think of how software and activity have emerged from “The Agile Manifesto.” Before this “Manifesto,” software development was not a rapid process. This instance usually led to many projects in the pipeline being canceled because of a change in the business need.
The Agile Manifesto is the major foundation of the Agile Movement. The use of Agile beyond the software development has been achieved in the manufacturing, collaboration, communication, and rapid development of granular features under the control of the general plan.
Agile Manifesto-History
This manifesto was released following frustrations experienced in the ‘90s. There was a major gap experienced between the delivery of a product and requirement analysis. This led to the cancellation of many projects. It was during this period when business requirements and customer requisites changed, and the result was that the final product was not in line with the present needs. The existing software development methodologies did not realize the demands.
Later in 2000, the Agile Manifesto and the 12 principles were released.
Values in the Agile manifesto
There are four key values of the ‘Agile Manifesto and the 12 principles’ which support it. Each of the Agile methodologies is based on these principles and values.
Individuals and Participations Over Tools and Processes
It is the first value in the Agile Manifesto. It places a greater emphasis on the people than the tools and processes. This is because people are the ones who respond to the needs of a business and propel its development. If the tools or process spearhead development, chances are that the team will not actively participate in the changes and this has a chance to not satisfy the customer.
Working software over a detailed documentation
Traditionally, a lot of time was spent on creating a document to be used in the product development and delivery. Technical requirements, specifications, test plans, documentation, and approvals were required. This extensive list caused delays in the development of software. Agile does not eliminate documentation but it provides a much better way to help the developer know what to do. Agile documents are created as user stories that are enough to help in the software development. The Agile Manifesto has respect for documentation but also credits much more respect to working software.