Sprint - Facts & Rules

Source:  Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber

Duration:

1.       Time-boxed to 30 consecutive calendar days (04 Weeks)

2.       This is the amount of time required for a Team to build something of significant interest to the Product Owner and stakeholders and bring it to a state where it is potentially shippable.

3.       This is also the maximum time team can work, before it requires artifacts and documentation to support its thought processes.

4.       This is also the maximum time that most stakeholders will wait without losing interest in the Team’s progress and without losing their belief that the Team is doing something meaningful for them.

5.       Well, selection of iteration length should be guided by the following factors:

• The length of the release being worked on
• The amount of uncertainty
• The ease of getting feedback
• How long priorities can remain unchanged
• Willingness to go without feedback
• The overhead of iterating
• A feeling of urgency is maintained

PB Change During Sprint:

6.       Team commits to PB during the Sprint planning meeting. No one is allowed to change this Product Backlog during the Sprint. PB is frozen until the end of the Sprint.

7.       Team can add or remove items after consulting with the Product Owner, during the current Sprint.

8.       If the Sprint proves to be not viable, due below reasons, the ScrumMaster can abnormally terminate the Sprint and initiate a new Sprint planning meeting to initiate the next Sprint.

• If the technology proves unworkable,
• If the business conditions change so that the Sprint will not be of value to the business, or
• If the Team is interfered with during the Sprint by anyone outside the Team.

9.       The Scrum Master can make this change on his/her  own accord or as requested by the Team or the PO.

Team Responsibility During Sprint:

10.   The Team members have below administrative responsibilities during the Sprint:

• Attend the Daily Scrum meeting, and
• Keep the Sprint Backlog up-to-date.
• Keep updated day-to-day hours remaining for each task.
• New tasks must be added to the Sprint Backlog as they are conceived

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Thanks & Regards,

Arun Manglick, (PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, MS-Project, CSSGB, ITIL, MCPD, MCTS, MTECH)

Project Manager | http://www.synechron.com
Mobile: +919850901262 || 9657863445

     

Sprint Planning Meeting - Facts

Source:  Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber

Duration:

1.       Time-boxed to 8 hours and consists of two segments that are time-boxed to 4 hours each.

2.       First segment is for selecting Product Backlog.

3.       Second segment is for preparing a Sprint Backlog - Tasks, Task Estimates, and Assignments

Attendees:

4.       Attendees are the Scrum Master, the Product Owner, and the Team.

5.       Additional parties can be invited by any of these people to provide additional business domain or technology domain information and advice, but they are dismissed after this information is provided.

6.       There are no chickens as observers.

Product Backlog Preparation:

7.       Product Owner must prepare the Product Backlog prior to the meeting.

8.       In the absence of either the Product Owner or the Product Backlog, the Scrum Master is required to construct an adequate Product Backlog prior to the meeting and to stand in for the Product Owner.

9.       The Team can make suggestions, but the decision of what Product Backlog can constitute the Sprint is the responsibility of the Product Owner.

10.   The Team is responsible for determining how much of the Product Backlog that the Product Owner wants worked on the Team will attempt to do during the Sprint.

First Segment:

11.   The goal of the first segment, or first 4 hours, is for the Team to select those Product Backlog items that it believes it can commit to turning into an increment of potentially shippable product functionality.

12.   Team will demonstrate this committed functionality to the Product Owner and stakeholders at the Sprint review meeting at the end of the Sprint.

13.   Time-boxing the first segment to 4 hours means that this is all of the time that is available for analyzing the Product Backlog. Further analysis must be performed during the Sprint.

14.   Large-grained, high-priority Product Backlog with imprecise estimates might not be thoroughly understood during this part of the Sprint planning meeting and might result in the Team not being able to complete all of the Product Backlog that it selects.

Second Segment:

15.   The second segment of the Sprint Planning meeting occurs immediately after the first segment and is also time-boxed to 4 hours.

16.   The Product Owner must be available to the Team during the second segment to answer questions that the Team might have about the Product Backlog.

17.   The output of the second segment is a list, called the Sprint Backlog, of Tasks, Task Estimates, and Assignments (No Prioritization) that will start the Team on the work of developing the functionality.

18.   The task list might not be complete, but it must be complete enough to reflect mutual commitment on the part of all Team members and to carry them through the first part of the Sprint, while the Team devises more tasks in the Sprint Backlog.

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Thanks & Regards,

Arun Manglick, (PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, MS-Project, CSSGB, ITIL, MCPD, MCTS, MTECH)

Project Manager | http://www.synechron.com
Mobile: +919850901262 || 9657863445

     

Daily Scrum Meeting - Facts & Rules

Source:  Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber

Duration:

1.       Time-boxed to 15 minutes regardless of the number of Team members.

2.       Hold the Daily Scrum in the same place at the same time every work day.

3.       The Daily Scrum is best held first thing in the day so that the first thing Team members do on arriving at work is think of what they did the day before and what they plan to do today.

Attendees:

4.       Attendees are the Scrum Master, the Product Owner, and the Team

5.       All Team members are required to attend.

6.       If for some reason a Team member can’t attend in person, the absent member must either attend by telephone or by having another Team member report on the absent member’s status.

7.       All Team members are required to keep Up-To-Date Day-To-Day Remaining Hours For Each Task.

Stand Up Procedure

8.       Team members must be prompt

9.       Scrum Master starts the meeting at the appointed time, regardless of who is present. Any members who are late pay $1 to the Scrum Master immediately.

10.   The Scrum Master begins the meeting by starting with the person immediately to his or her left and proceeding counter clockwise around the room until everyone has reported.

11.   Each Team member should respond to three questions only:

·         What have you done since the last Daily Scrum regarding this project?

·         What will you do between now and the next Daily Scrum meeting regarding this project?

·         What impedes you from performing your work as effectively as possible?

12.   The Scrum Master is responsible for moving the reporting along briskly/ quickly, from person to person.

13.   During the Daily Scrum, only one person talks at a time. That person is the one who is reporting his or her status. Everyone else listens. There are no side conversations.

Separate Meeting Post Stand-up:

14.   Team members should not digress beyond answering these three questions into issues, designs, discussion of problems, or gossip.

15.   Any discussion of interest to other Team members or needs the assistance of other Team members, separate meeting must be arranged immediately for all interested parties to get together after the Daily Scrum to set up a meeting.

Chickens In Stand Up

16.   Chickens are not allowed to talk, make observations, make faces, or otherwise make their presence in the Daily Scrum meeting obtrusive.

17.   Chickens are not allowed to talk with Team members after the meeting for clarification or to provide advice or instructions.

18.   If too many chickens attend the meeting, the ScrumMaster can limit attendance so that the meeting can remain orderly and focused.

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Thanks & Regards,

Arun Manglick, (PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, MS-Project, CSSGB, ITIL, MCPD, MCTS, MTECH)

Project Manager | http://www.synechron.com
Mobile: +919850901262 || 9657863445

     

Sprint Review Meeting - Facts & Rules

Source:  Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber

Duration:

1.       Time-boxed to 04 Hours (Four Hrs).

2.       Preparation Time Should not be more than 1 hour

Attendees:

3.       ScrumMaster should attempt to determine the number of people who expect to attend the Sprint review meeting and set up the meeting to accommodate them.

4.       Team members &  Stake Holders (Specially PO)  – Team  members  presenting functionality, answering Stakeholder questions.

Review Content:

5.       Functionality that isn’t “done” cannot be presented.

6.       Present to the Product Owner and stakeholders functionality that is “done”

7.       Although the meaning of “done” can vary from organization to organization, it usually means that the functionality is completely engineered and could be potentially shipped or implemented.

8.       Artifacts that aren’t functionality cannot be presented except when used in support of understanding the demonstrated functionality.

Review Procedure

9.       Sprint review starts with a Team member presenting the Sprint goal, the Product Backlog committed to, and the Product Backlog completed.

10.   Majority of the Sprint review is spent with Team members presenting functionality, answering stakeholder questions regarding the presentation, and noting changes that are desired.

11.   Stakeholders are free to voice any comments, observations, or criticisms regarding the increment of potentially shippable product functionality between presentations.

12.   At the end of the Sprint review, the ScrumMaster announces the place and date of the next Sprint review to the Product Owner and all stakeholders.

Action Items – At The End

13.   At the end of the presentations, the stakeholders are polled, one by one, to get their impressions, any desired changes, and the priority of these changes.

14.   Stakeholders can identify functionality that wasn’t delivered or wasn’t delivered as expected and request that such functionality be placed in the Product Backlog for prioritization.

15.   Product Owner decides What is done and What is not.

16.   Product Owner & Team discuss remaining PB, determine what to do next and do prioritization.

17.   Different Team members can then discuss what went well and what didn’t go well in the Sprint.

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Thanks & Regards,

Arun Manglick, (PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, MS-Project, CSSGB, ITIL, MCPD, MCTS, MTECH)

Project Manager | http://www.synechron.com
Mobile: +919850901262 || 9657863445

     

Sprint Retrospective Meeting - Facts

Source:  Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber

Duration:

1.       Time-boxed to 03 Hours (Three Hrs).

2.       Occurs after Sprint Review & Before Next Sprint Planning meeting.

Attendees:

3.       Team, ScrumMaster, and Product Owner.

4.       The Product Owner is optional

Retrospective Procedure

5.       All Team members answer two questions:

•  What went well during the last Sprint?
• What could be improved in the next Sprint?

6.       The ScrumMaster writes down the Team’s answers in summary form.

7.       ScrumMaster does not provide answers, but facilitate the Team’s search for better ways for the Scrum process to work for it.

Action Items – At The End

8.       The Team prioritizes in which order it wants to talk about the potential improvements.

9.       Actionable items that can be added to the next Sprint should be devised as high-priority non-functional Product Backlog.

More Details On Retrospective

10.   Type of Retrospectives

11.   Retrospectives Improvements

12.   Steps to Conduct Retrospectives

These three details will be provided in separate post.

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Thanks & Regards,

Arun Manglick, (PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, MS-Project, CSSGB, ITIL, MCPD, MCTS, MTECH)

Project Manager | http://www.synechron.com
Mobile: +919850901262 || 9657863445