The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook

Book description

A collection of tips, tricks, and war stories to help the professional ScrumMaster break the chains of traditional organization and management

  • Checklists, questions, and exercises to get you thinking (and acting) like a professional ScrumMaster
  • Presented in a relaxed, jargon-free, personable style
  • Full of ideas, tips, and anecdotes based on real-world experiences

In Detail

A natural and difficult tension exists between a project team (supply) and its customer (demand); a professional ScrumMaster relaxes this tension using the Scrum framework so that the team arrives at the best possible outcome.

"The Professional ScrumMaster’s Handbook" is a practical, no-nonsense guide to helping you become an inspiring and effective ScrumMaster known for getting results.

This book goes into great detail about why it seems like you’re fighting traditional management culture every step of the way. You will explore the three roles of Scrum and how, working in harmony, they can deliver a product in the leanest way possible. You’ll understand that even though there is no room for a project manager in Scrum, there are certain “management” aspects you should be familiar with to help you along the way. Getting a team to manage itself and take responsibility is no easy feat; this book will show you how to earn trust by displaying it and inspiring courage in a team every day.

"The Professional ScrumMaster’s Handbook" will challenge you to dig deep within yourself to improve your mindset, practices, and values in order to build and support the very best agile teams.

Table of contents

  1. The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook
    1. Table of Contents
    2. The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook
    3. Credits
    4. Foreword
    5. About the Author
    6. Acknowledgment
    7. About the Reviewers
    8. www.PacktPub.com
      1. Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more
        1. Why Subscribe?
        2. Free Access for Packt account holders
        3. Instant Updates on New Packt Books
    9. Preface
      1. What this book covers
      2. What you need for this book
      3. Who this book is for
      4. Conventions
      5. Reader feedback
      6. Customer support
        1. Errata
        2. Piracy
        3. Questions
    10. 1. Scrum – A Brief Review of the Basics (and a Few Interesting Tidbits)
      1. The problem
      2. A brief history
      3. The underlying concepts of Scrum
        1. Complex adaptive systems
        2. The empirical process control barstool
        3. Scrum core values
        4. Scrum is inherently lean
      4. Scrum roles
        1. Scrum team
        2. Product owner
        3. ScrumMaster
      5. Brief review of the Scrum framework
        1. Sprint planning
        2. Daily scrum meeting
        3. Sprint review meeting
        4. Sprint retrospective
        5. Release planning (optional)
      6. Scrum artifacts
        1. The product backlog
        2. The sprint backlog
        3. The product increment
      7. Visible progress
        1. Release backlog and burndown
        2. Sprint burndown
      8. Dysfunctions or true constraints?
      9. Is your team ready for Scrum?
      10. Summary
      11. Recommended reading
    11. 2. Release Planning – Tuning Product Development
      1. Start at the beginning – product backlog
        1. Focus product backlogs on users and values
        2. Engage the team early
        3. Prioritization can be useful for other things
      2. Release planning – when will you set your features free?
        1. Timing of releases and release planning
        2. Don't create the software big dig
        3. Integrate early and often to mitigate risks
        4. Make buffers visible
        5. How to conduct a release planning event?
          1. Do your homework!
          2. Facilitating the release planning meeting
            1. Participants
            2. Agenda
            3. The physical space
            4. Definition of Done
            5. Release planning output
          3. Release planning summary
      3. Summary
      4. Recommended reading
    12. 3. Sprint Planning – Fine-tune the Sprint Commitment
      1. Sprint planning basics
      2. Preparing for sprint planning
        1. High-octane stories
        2. Help the product owner prepare for sprint planning
        3. Physical space
        4. Visualize the meeting
        5. Scratchpad, script, and agenda
      3. Running the sprint planning meeting
        1. Part I – the What and the Why
          1. Different types of stories
        2. Part II – the How
          1. Understanding capacity
          2. Talk first, then identify sprint tasks
          3. Anyone tasks, expert tasks, and pairing
          4. Sprint buffering
          5. It helps to see time
          6. Team members should talk with each other
          7. Don't over-facilitate
          8. Sample sprint planning checklist
          9. Commit!
      4. Improving sprint planning
      5. Summary
      6. Recommended reading
    13. 4. Sprint! Visible, Collaborative, and Meaningful Work
      1. How the Scrum team should work
      2. Working in a sprint
        1. Sprints shouldn't be just Sprints
        2. Beware of the old mind-set creeping into the new paradigm
      3. Estimating work
      4. The misunderstood daily scrum meeting
        1. Three questions
          1. What did I do since yesterday's meeting?
          2. What will I do by tomorrow's meeting?
          3. What blocks me from being able to do my work?
        2. Do we have to meet every day?
        3. Who's allowed to attend the daily scrum?
        4. Look ahead at the next sprint's product backlog items
        5. It takes a village – communicating during the sprint
      5. Individual influences to the work of the sprint
        1. Factor 1 – Openness
        2. Factor 2 – Conscientiousness
        3. Factor 3 – Extroversion, are you an innie or an outie?
        4. Factor 4 – Agreeableness
        5. Factor 5 – Neuroticism
      6. What's 'Norm'al for one team is not for another
      7. A corporate culture and its impact on teamwork
        1. Team assumptions about management
        2. Corporate mind-set opposes the Agile manifesto
        3. Fear of empowerment
        4. Employees feel like headcount
      8. Summary
      9. Recommended reading
    14. 5. The End? Improving Product and Process One Bite at a Time
      1. Sprint review – inspecting and adapting the product
        1. Product owner acceptance
        2. Prior to the sprint review
        3. During the sprint review
          1. Set the context
          2. Give a visual
          3. Keep your stories straight
          4. Keep everyone focused
          5. Does a Scrum team demo incomplete work?
          6. See the whole
        4. Possible outcomes of a sprint review
        5. Don't surprise the product owner
        6. Sprint reviews for continuous flow frameworks
          1. Sprint review – a time for collaboration and trust
      2. Sprint retrospective – inspecting and adapting processes and teamwork
        1. SCRUM is not an acronym for Serious Crud Required by Upper Management
        2. Unearthing information for improvement
          1. Set the safety
          2. Recall sprint events
          3. Ask – What worked well for us? What didn't work so well for us?
          4. Who owns the improvement?
          5. Prioritize and assign action items
          6. Make REAL action items
        3. Some different retrospective techniques
          1. Change the scenery
          2. Visualize the future
          3. Team cave art
          4. Retrospective yoga/meditation
      3. Why should we care about reviews and retrospectives?
      4. Summary
      5. Recommended reading
    15. 6. The Criticality of Real-time Information
      1. Yesterday's news is old news
        1. Getting the message
      2. Through the Scrum microscope
        1. 1x magnification – product vision/initiatives
        2. 2x magnification – the product roadmap
        3. 4x magnification – the release plan
          1. Release the burndown baseline
          2. Baseline with updates
          3. Team velocity chart
          4. A Gantt chart in an Agile project
        4. 8x magnification – the product backlog
          1. What does your user want?
        5. 16x magnification – the sprint
          1. User stories in sprint planning
          2. Acceptance criteria
          3. Definition of Done
          4. Sprint goals
          5. Sprint reviews
        6. 32x magnification – tasks, daily scrums, and other information
          1. Daily broadcasts
          2. Daily scrums
          3. Sprint backlogs
          4. Sprint burndown chart
          5. What burns down can also burn up
        7. 64x magnification – read all about it, in the team room!
          1. Monitor this!
      3. Scrum microscope summary
      4. When physical taskboards and conversations aren't enough
        1. Invite stakeholders to sprint reviews
        2. Create and distribute reports
      5. Waste and obstacle removal
      6. Summary
    16. 7. Scrum Values Expose Fear, Dysfunction, and Waste
      1. Prepare for change aches and pains
      2. The five core values of Scrum
        1. Scrum value #1 – Courage
          1. Free the spark
        2. Scrum value #2 – Commitment
          1. Commitment exposes fear of dedicated, cross-functional Scrum teams
            1. Expert-to-Task or ETT model of human resource allocation
            2. Team-to-Backlog or the TTB model of human team allocation
          2. What do we do about commitment issues?
        3. Scrum value #3 – Openness
          1. Secrecy and what to do about it
          2. Openness exposes truth about capacity and demand
          3. Openness exposes a need for slowing down in order to eventually speed up
        4. Scrum value #4 – Focus
          1. Lack of focus and personal control = missed commitments
          2. Focus reveals waste
          3. Focus reveals failure to understand small increments
        5. Scrum value #5 – Respect
          1. Power, position, and control and what to do about it
      3. Summary
      4. Recommended reading
    17. 8. Everyday Leadership for the ScrumMaster and Team
      1. Everyday leadership
      2. First, what kind of personality do you have?
        1. Learn to look into your reflection
      3. Portrait of a leader
        1. Selfless, confident, and accountable
        2. Open to feedback
        3. Builds trust
        4. Leads with Theory Y
        5. Honest
      4. How to become a better ScrumMaster
        1. Empower yourself and others!
        2. Help others visualize the desired state
        3. Influence others
        4. Roll up your sleeves and servant-lead
        5. Listen more than talk
        6. Plant seeds
        7. Choose to be happy, focus on the positive
      5. Know your communication style
        1. Loud or quiet?
        2. Direct versus passive
        3. Switzerland or Supreme Court judge
      6. Other ScrumMaster characteristics
        1. Procrastinator or proactive
        2. Teacher
        3. Student
        4. Scrum buddy
        5. Journal/walk up a hill
      7. Which ScrumMaster persona are you?
        1. Techie Taj
        2. Bossy Betty
        3. Clammed Up Carl
        4. Thundering Thea
        5. Officer Sophie
      8. Summary
      9. Recommended reading
    18. 9. Shaping the Agile Organization
      1. Will Agile cause a ripple, or a tsunami?
        1. How does your organization measure up to the Scrum values?
        2. What if the Scrum values score is low?
      2. Culture change requires a multi-faceted approach
        1. Illustrating the need for and direction of change
        2. Pre-agility survey
        3. Waste score
        4. Old-fashioned interviews
        5. The Agile organization chart and roles matrix
        6. Traditional roles in an Agile organization
        7. Scaling an Agile mind-set
      3. Self-actualizing individuals create an Agile organization
        1. Goals and metrics that motivate self-actualizing
          1. Person has a say in it
          2. Understanding what demotivates
          3. Standardizing measurements
          4. Frequent, multi-perspective feedback
          5. CEO scorecard
      4. Don't go it alone
      5. Avoiding Scrum as a panacea
      6. Why change? What blocks?
      7. Immunity to change
      8. Face it, Scrum might not be for your organization
      9. Summary
      10. Recommended reading
    19. 10. Scrum – Large and Small
      1. Scrum stops the resource shell game
      2. Small Scrum
        1. Big programs, small Scrum
      3. When Scrum gets big—dysfunction or constraint?
        1. Challenge 1: Fearful ScrumMasters
        2. Challenge 2: Late integration
        3. Challenge 3: Communication across multiple teams
        4. Challenge 4: Big picture metrics
          1. Customer happiness
          2. Time to Market
          3. Quality
          4. Employee morale
        5. Challenge 5: Not done – the root of all evil
        6. Challenge 6: Too few product owners
        7. Challenge 7: Scaling too much, too fast
        8. Challenge 8: Wrong team structure
        9. Challenge 9: Distributed teams
      4. A real need for a project Grand Poobah
        1. More tips for large Scrums
      5. Agile DNA
      6. Summary
      7. Recommended reading
    20. 11. Scrum and the Future
      1. A leaner Agile Manifesto
      2. Redefining the role of the organization
        1. Self-managing teams – the inmates run the asylum!
          1. Career paths
          2. True visibility
          3. Capacity, not projects
          4. The CEO of Me
        2. Customer collaboration via prioritized product backlog
          1. Don't squeeze innovation out of the product backlog
            1. How modern organizations make space for innovation
            2. The creative culture
      3. Regular product reviews or demos
      4. We are all ScrumMasters
    21. A. The ScrumMaster's Responsibilities
      1. The ScrumMaster's role
        1. Core knowledge
        2. Responsibilities
          1. Running the sprint
          2. Assisting the product owner
          3. Creating a high-performing Scrum team
          4. Making progress visible
          5. Supporting and living the Scrum core values
          6. Educating others
          7. Improving personal skills and characteristics
    22. B. ScrumMaster's Workshop
      1. Chapter 1: Scrum – A Brief Review of the Basics (and a Few Interesting Tidbits)
      2. Chapter 2: Release Planning – Tuning Product Development
      3. Chapter 3: Sprint Planning – Fine-tune the Sprint Commitment
      4. Chapter 4: Sprint! Valuable, Collaborative, and Meaningful Work
      5. Chapter 5: The End? Improving Product and Process One Bite at a Time
      6. Chapter 6: The Criticality of Real-time Information
      7. Chapter 7: Scrum Values Expose Fear, Dysfunction, and Waste
      8. Chapter 8: Everyday Leadership for the ScrumMaster and Team
      9. Chapter 9: Shaping the Agile Organization
      10. Chapter 10: Scrum – Large and Small
    23. Index

Product information

  • Title: The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook
  • Author(s): Stacia Viscardi
  • Release date: April 2013
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781849688024