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Ignore these tips at your own peril!

If you are a Scrum Master, and want to advance your career, join me as I share some of the best tips, tricks, and techniques.

Scrum Masters Tool Box

To begin with, here is the list for your quick reference.

[Click on Down arrow to expand each items, for additional description]

[expand title=”Make it fun with the Fun Backlog”]
Remember, you are part of an agile team. And, if you are using Scrum, you would be seeing each other every day, possibly multiple times. So, while you are together, you might as well have fun.

Happy Team = Productive Team

[/expand]
[expand title=”Buddy System”]
A team member can not attend daily standup since she has to take her kid to a doctor’s office. How do you get her updates to the team, knowing that she won’t be able to attend in person, nor on the phone?

What does your team do? What policy you have in place? Do you have it on your team’s Working Agreements?

[Please don’t ask him to send an email to everyone on the team. That is the farthest from being an agile team.]
[/expand]
- Team Name that radiates Team Personality
- Start with ‘Y’ for each role
- Common understanding of every ceremony with the Event Canvas
- Got to use Agile Bingo to set them up for Success
- Must use Pomodoro. Timebox Everything!
- Visualize with Information Radiator
- Get on the same page with ‘Roles and Responsibilities’ game
- Peek into Life of a SM and PO (with Standard Work)
- Consensus on Scrum Calendar
- Do you have Team Calendar?
- PO must offer Office Hours
- No email updates at Standup, only Buddies allowed!
- Escape room – to gel the Team together as one group
- Resolve to WoW your Customer with DoWoW
- Use two bookends of User Stories: DoR and DoD
- Defer Discussions for Later with the 16th Minute
- Don’t like 16th minute? Use Parking Lot instead!
- Everyone can use Yellow Card
- be the Terminator with Impediments Log
- Many different hats you (a Scrum Master) wears
- Story must answer Who-What-Why
- Estimation by the Team, for the Team. Use T-shirt sizing or Story Points. Have fun with Planning Poker
- Mobiles Apps can be your friends!
- Use the PB Prioritization meeting
- Dependency Wheel
- No more meetings, only Collaborative working sessions now on!
- Optimize Sprint Planning with 7Cs
- Use Part 1, Part 2 of sprint planning
- Start sprint in middle of the week
- Be absent.. intentionally
- Law of 2 feet in Working Agreements
- Anything and Everything (that we are working on ) must be reflected on Scrum Board
- Story-based Standup to shift focus to VALUE
- Learn to say ‘No’
- Pay attention to hockey stick
- Pair Programming (Hour) and promote collaboration, knowledge sharing
- Stop flushing money down the toilet! Focus on getting stories to READY
- Only have Hamburger and California Roll in the Lunch! Must slice the Stories Vertically
- Skip Backlog refinement at your own peril
- Mid-sprint health check
- What movie is being played? Batman and Robin OR Batman vs Superman? How is the relationship between PO and SM?
- Demo by everyone
- Retro at Cafe is Fun!
- Must use Improvement Kata
- Do we need to fix the defects right away?
- Say:Do is more important than Velocity. Velocity, say:do, burn up and sustainable pace
- Shut up or speak up
- Scrum of Scrum

Posted on Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Spare Capacity in your in-flight Sprint..

Step into the Scenario

Scrum Team

You have a ‘young’ team that is just into it’s second sprint. You are doing two-week sprints, and team just finished first week of current sprint. Three of the team members come up to you, the Scrum Master, and tell you that they have spare capacity. They completed their part of the work on some of the stories and now wondering what to do.

You obviously don’t want them to be seating idle. What should be your approach?

Explore 5

In this scenario, it is tempting to just tell them to ‘Pull’ a new story from Product Backlog. But, hold your horses here!

I would recommend that you (as a team) explore these 5 different avenues.

What to do when you have spare capacity in your in-flight Sprint?

Let’s walk through each avenue one by one.

Swarm

First preference should be on ‘Swarming’. Ask them to help other team member(s) in closing story. Remember, we get points for closing stories, and not for opening more. As I like to say..
[bctt tweet=”Stop Starting, and Start Finishing” username=”beyondCSM”]

Pairing

You could go and pair with another team member. May be pick up new skills, may be learn new approach, may be provide another set of eyes to your colleague as s/he works on driving a story to completion.

If you are short sighted, you will look at pairing as a waste of time (as two people are working on one thing). However, if you are long, you will realize that it is an investment into the team.

Pairing helps in knowledgesharing, spreading the ‘wealth’, and gelling the team as one unit. In some shape, it also improves the quality of the outcome.

Pay off your Debt!

Got any technical debt, that has been identified earlier and put aside with a reason that ‘we don’t have time’? This would be good avenue to spend that spare capacity on. Work on paying off that debt!

AIR it out!

How about looking into some..

Automation
Improvement
Refactoring

Even a small amount of automation would help the team in the long run.

Pull

I would suggest pulling a new story from your Product Backlog should be the last avenue that you explore. And, if you go this route, make sure to ask and confirm with your product owner. You want to pull the next highest priority story.

Above all, pulling new story should be an exception, not a norm.

Indicators..

We talked about these five avenues to explore. Now, let’s look at the root cause as to why we have this spare capacity in the first place.

In essence, getting this spare capacity in the middle of in-flight sprint is an indicator on one of these factors at play.

Team is being conservative when committing the stories to sprint [at sprint planning event.] So, you need to facilitate that conversation at the new sprint planning.
Team over estimating the points assigned to the story. Being overcauseous and erring on higher side, the team is assigning more points to the story than it actually needs.

Remember, this is a new, young team. I would not blame the team for any of these, as this is just part of the learning process. They will eventually figure this out, you are there just help and speed up that process.

[bctt tweet=”What to do when your team has spare capacity in your #Sprint ? pic.twitter.com/ZOREu5V7Zf” username=”beyondCSM”]

Posted on Monday, April 9, 2018

Advance your skills.. Advance your Career

20 Tips to make you an Awesome Scrum Master

Jack Nicholson once said

The minute that you are not learning, I believe you are dead

The question for you is, Are you still ‘alive’? Are you ok being one among the thousands, or are you the one who wants to stand out from the crowd?

STOP here if …

STOP here if you are okay with being a mediocre Scrum Master.

READ ON if ..

If you are someone who is looking to sharpen his/her saw, if you are someone who has embraced the culture and mentality of continuous improvement and continuous learning, if you are some one who is looking to advance his/her skills than READ ON.

Join me here every week as I share some advanced skills, tools, and techniques that are guaranteed to make you a better Scrum Master. Join me here every week to advance your skills that will help you advance your career.

With that said, let’s start reviewing the Tips.

[WPSM_AC id=2474]

Like these tips? We request you to share them with your friends and colleagues.

[bctt tweet=”20 Tips to make you an Awesome #scrumMaster http://www.nimeshsoni.com/20-tips-advanced-scrum-master-skills ” username=”beyondCSM”]

Got your own tips that you want to share with the community? Send us an email.

Posted on Wednesday, April 4, 2018

7Cs of Sprint Planning

How do you do Sprint Planning? Are you struggling to keep the team interested in coming to Sprint Planning, every sprint?

Show them the VALUE! Use my 7Cs of sprint planning to keep your sprint planning on track and make it the most productive meeting for the team.

7Cs of Sprint Planning

Let me explain each of these Cs in detail to help you make your Sprint Planning the most productive one.

Close

CLOSE refers to Closing your current sprint 🙂 You need to make conscious decisions on any of the ‘left over’ stories, the ones that the team did not complete during this sprint and then close the sprint in preparation for the next, upcoming sprint

Confirm

Confirm, as a Team, with the Product Owner (PO) that the Stories that are at the ‘top’ of the Product Backlog are still his/her highest priorities and that the team got them READY through previous refinement sessions.

Confirm that those stories are READY and meet the Definition of Ready (DoR) criteria. You can read more on DoR and DoD here http://www.nimeshsoni.com/art-getting-done-less/

Capacity

How many Stories can you load into the Sprint backlog? To answer this question, you will need to know the Velocity of the team as well as the capacity for this Sprint, as a Team.

When I say Capacity, I am not referring to how many hours. Instead, I am referring to the Day offs, Holidays, Planned Vacations, etc. Is any one taking any time off during this sprint? What about holidays and company-wide events that will take time away from this sprint and impact your capacity.

To help you answer these questions easily, I strongly recommend you set up a Team Calendar where each team member keeps his/her time-off requests. This team calendar becomes your go-to artifact to answer the Capacity questions.

Remember, the Capacity will also impact team’s Velocity.

Consensus

Bases on the discussion on Capacity, and using Velocity as a guide line, team should be pulling top priority items from Product Backlog into the Sprint Backlog. How many stories to load into the sprint will depend on the capacity and velocity.

As a team, you need to come to a consensus as to how many stories / story points is feasible in this sprint.

Commit

Once team has a consensus on the number of stories, story points and what stories to load, the team Commits to them. Team promises to do everything in their power to drive these stories to completion through this sprint.

This is where you can mark the completion of your Sprint Planning event. The team can go back to their work environment and actually start working on them.

The next two Cs are more for the Scrum Master than the entire team.

Communicate

Now that you have completed an awesome and highly productive Sprint Planning event, the Scrum Master should communicate to the stakeholders. Send out a communication as to what is the scope for this sprint, what stories were committed, and what feature/functionality the team is attempting to complete through this sprint.

This will keep the stakeholders in the loop, and they will know what to expect at the Sprint Review.

Remember one of the pillars of Scrum!? The Transparency!

Collect

I am not a big fan on Task writing. But, if team decided to capture Tasks under the stories, then we need to collect them quickly. I generally advise Scrum Master and team to set a deadline here. For example, by end of the day, enter any tasks that you may want to capture.

Stand out from the Crowd!

Don’t settle being a mediocre Scrum Master. Stand out from the crowd with this advanced certification.

Click here to Enroll in A-CSM certification workshop Now

There you have it folks! Use these 7Cs as your guiding posts as you go through your next Sprint Planning. Do let me know how it goes 🙂

Posted on Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Join my new WhatsApp group – mentorME

Please join my WhatsApp group, aptly named ‘mentorME‘.

mentorME – the WhatsApp group

Why this group?

I am starting this group in the spirit of ‘Giving back to the Community’.
I love to share my knowledge and experience with fellow Agilists on this journey.
Promote sharing of knowledge along with the tools, templates, and techniques.
Share and learn from each other
Provide support, motivation, and a helping hand

Who is it for?

This group is for the Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and the Team members alike. In essence, this groups is for you if ..

you are hungry to learn new tools, techniques
you love sharing and collaborating
you are looking to advance your skills and sharpen your saw
you don’t mind landing a helping hand to your fellow agilists

How do I join

Send Nimesh Soni an email with your WhatsApp details and he will gladly add you to the group. You can send him email at nimesh@nimeshSoni.com

Please include..

First Name
Last Name
Phone number for adding you to WhatsApp
Brief Bio (tell us who you are, where you are from)

mentorME – the WhatsApp group

Click here to send email and JOIN

Templates, worksheets, illustrations

Videos

Resources, Websites

Retrospective Tools

Products you might be interested, if you want to master the craft of SM

Path to Scrum Mastery

Mastering Backlog Refinement

Experiential Learning

Mentorship

Ignore these tips at your own peril!

Happy Team = Productive Team

Step into the Scenario

Explore 5

Swarm

Pairing

Pay off your Debt!

AIR it out!

Pull

Indicators..

STOP here if …

READ ON if ..

Close

Confirm

Capacity

Consensus

Commit

Communicate

Collect

Stand out from the Crowd!

Why this group?

Who is it for?

How do I join

mentorME – the WhatsApp group