Category Archives: Checklist

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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

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. 

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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 🙂

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Standard Work

Standard Work is one of the most powerful but least used Lean tools. By documenting the current practices, it forms the baseline for continuous improvement. Let’s review some of the benefits quickly.

Benefits of Standard Work

  • Standardizes the work across different teams, different people; ensuring consistency across the organization; making outcomes predictable and measurable.
  • Sets clear expectations, branding as to what’s ‘given’ when the team/individual says a certain activity is ‘Done’.
  • Ensure that certain routine, mundane tasks get done (and don’t get overlooked due to them being ‘boring’.)
  • A common ‘platform’ is set up, a baseline against which the effectiveness of the individuals and/or team can be measured; ensuring a certain level of quality.
  • It’s the DNA of continuous improvement (CI). It makes CI routine and ingrained in the very existence of the organization.
  • Standard Work is a ‘snapshot‘, a picture of the best way to do things at this moment in time, with an eye on continuous improvement.

Without standard work, there is no kaizen (CI)
– Taichii Ohno

In essence, Standard Work helps you in minimizing waste and maximizing value delivery.

Would it help to have your standard work documented? Can it help you, your team, your organization improve the productivity and deliver more VALUE for your customer?

Go ahead and document your Standard of Work.

What’s Better yet…

Get these Standard Work templates for FREE, and put your team on the “hyper Productivity” lane!

Standardized work is a collection and implementation of the best practices known to that point.

[tabby title=”Scrum Master”]Standard work

 

 

[tabby title=”Product Owner”]Standard work

 

[tabby title=”Scrum Team”]Standard work

 

[tabby title=”Get them All”]Standard work

 

[tabbyending]

[tweetthis]Standard Work is a ‘snapshot’, a picture of the best way to do things at this moment in time, with an eye towards Continuous Improvement.[/tweetthis]

Interested in more …

Interested in more than just the Standard Work? How about Checklists, template emails, and worksheets to help your Scrum team?
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Not convinced yet…

Listen to what Steph has to say below 🙂

Testimonial from an actual Customer

I purchased this playbook and find it very helpful.  I think the email templates came in handy when trying to wrangle folks from all over the company together.  They keep me organized and the email now provides more information with these structured templates.

The “Standard Work” for each role is great as well.  It provides helpful hints on role responsibility and helps with keeping me organized with all the artifacts related to a project.

Great work and thanks!

– Steph W

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Improve Daily Scrum

Daily Scrum or Daily Stand Up is a very important ceremony in the Scrum framework. As part of the Daily Scrum, the team meets on a regular basis for a quick sync up of 15 minutes.

scrum-calendar-daily-standup

Scrum Calendar Events [DS=Daily Scrum]

Remember, you only have 15 minutes to finish this Daily Scrum. We want to use every minute optimally during this ceremony, don’t we? So what are the different ways we can optimize it?  

Top 10 Tips for Daily Scrum

Here are my tips to have the team gel together quickly, as well as eliminate unnecessary churns that will happen at the Daily Scrum. Again, the goal is to maximize every minute of this Daily Scrum and make it a high performing ceremony.

  1. Come Prepared

    Ask your team member to use this tool before they come to Daily Scrum. Have your team members think about their updates before they come to Daily Scrum. Write three things on the Post It notes.

    Daily standup

    Write your updates to the three basic Questions

  2. Be Explicit

    Announce the start and end of your Daily Scrum. Make it explicit, use some specific music or it could be a simple as some one just announcing that it is the ‘START’ and ‘END’ of the Daily Scrum (at the beginning and end of the 15-minute timebox respectively).

    make it Explicit - Announce START and STOP

    make it Explicit – Announce START and STOP

  3. Parking Lot

    Introduce Parking lot and use it extensively to defer the discussions (after the end of Daily Scrum). This will help you keep the momentum during the Daily Scrum and enable you to quickly go through the synch up from each team member.

  4. 4th Question

    Introduce 4th question: Is there anything that you want to discuss with your team member(s) after the Daily Scrum?

    4th Question - Defer to Parking Lot

    4th Question – Defer to Parking Lot

    If yes, the team member mentions it quickly and someone captures it into the Parking Lot. Review and discuss the items on Parking Lot after the Daily Scrum is completed.

  5. After Party

    This is a time set aside, allocated for the discussion that we deferred during the Daily Scrum. You may have put a couple of items in the Parking Lot. Once the end of the Scrum is announced, some of the team members would stay back for their respective discussions. This is what I refer to as to as After Party!

    All the team members do not need to stay back, only the ones who are required for the discussion would.

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    Want to know more tips to improve your Daily Scrum? your Scrum implementation?
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  6. (Better) Equipments

    Just have proper equipment(s) to provide better quality audio and video to the team members.

    Yes, the Daily Scrum has to be in person. And team members have to be there physically for the Daily Scrum. With that said, there will always be some exceptions where a team member cannot attend the Daily Scrum in person. You will have to have a way for them to remotely attend the Daily Scrum. Having better quality audio will tremendously improve the productivity of your Daily Scrum.

    You can provide better quality audio for under $50 investment in a bluetooth speaker. Here is the one that I carry in my beg all the time.

  7. (Update) Working Agreements

    You need to cover those exceptions (as discussed in Tip# 6) in your working agreement, have the team talk about it as to how they will handle those scenarios where a team member cannot attend the Daily Scrum in person. Amend your working agreements to cover that scenario.

    For example, one of my team had this on their working agreement:
    When a team member cannot attend in person…

    1. S/he will provide the updates to his/her Buddy. This buddy will bring those updates to the team in person.
    2. If that cannot be done then the team member will jump on the conference call.
    3. When everything else fails, send an email addressed to the team with your updates.

    Bottom line is to have your team discuss these scenarios and update their working agreements accordingly.

  8. Break the eye contact

    I have seen this time and time again, especially with the new teams. Often times when providing the updates, a team member is looking at the Scrum Master (only) as if she is providing the updates to the Scrum Master and not the team. Now, remember Daily Scrum is for the team. A team member is providing the updates to others on the team, not just to the Scrum master. To break this mode I often encourage my Scrum Masters to break the eye contact. As soon as a team member starts providing updates to you as a Scrum Master, look away from her. Look at the floor or look at your scrum board; do whatever to break that eye contact. This will encourage them to look at other team members.

  9. Be Absent, intentionally

    I encourage Scrum Master to occasionally skip the Daily Scrum, be absent intentionally.The goal here is to see how the team handles your absence.
    Does the Daily Scrum break apart because you are not there or does the team step up and handle it nicely.
    This will also give you indication as to whether the team is self-organizing and tackles those scenarios by themselves

  10. Make it Visible

    The last and the most important tip I think is to make it Visible. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words! So, use all the visual props, you can use a wall in the hallway as your Scrum Board, or use some flip chart papers and start using that as your Scrum Board.

    Put your posters on that and use it while having the Daily Scrum. Post your Working Agreements, Definition of Done, and Definition of Ready in the Daily Scrum area. In short, make it visual!

As I mentioned, in the beginning, these are simple techniques that I have used a lot when I start working with new scrum teams. I often introduced this in an incremental fashion. They are very effective and impactful.

What tips are you employing to keep your Daily Scrum on track, to finish it on time while keeping it useful and productive for the Team?

Let us know and we will include it in this list, along with credit to you of course.

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INVEST in your User Stories – Nimesh Soni

Write better User Stories with this Visual Worksheet

User Stories are the lifeline of an Agile team. Even the BEST, high performing teams will struggle to deliver Value if they are fed bad Stories. As they say, INVEST in your User Stories!

Use this visual worksheet to help you, guide you in writing better User Stories. Help your team Help you with this worksheet.invest in your user stories
Onwards to writing user stories that help teams in creating value, frequently and on a regular cadence.

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The Art of getting MORE done with LESS

Can Agilists use Check Lists? Can checklists help them perform at a much better level? To answer this question, we will have to visit the two bookends of User Stories. Please grab copies of your team’s Definition of Ready (DoR) and Definition of Done (DoD).

Two book of end User Stories

Two books of end User Stories: DoR, DoD

A user story should not be allowed to go onto a sprint backlog unless it meets all the items listed on DoR; in order for it to be marked as READY. On the other end, teams are supposed to mark a user story as DONE only when it meets all the criteria a laid out in the DoD. Aren’t these checklists? Can we expand them to other areas of doing Agile?

Why use the Checklists?

If NASA can use checklists to send satellites into the outer space. If surgeons can use the checklist to eliminate contamination in the surgery room, why can’t we, the Agilists, use the checklists to eliminate the worst, minimize the waste, and improve our productivity? As Atul Gawande describes in his book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, the knowledge exists, but often times we fail to apply it correctly.

We need a different strategy for overcoming failure, one that builds on experience and takes advantage of the knowledge people have but somehow also makes up for our inevitable human inadequacies.
– Atul Gawande,  The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Listed below are some additional benefits of using Checklists.

  • Helps you analyze what you are doing, why you are doing and then eliminate unnecessary steps and optimize it by combining some of them.
  • Makes work results more predictable.
  • Helps you in making Repeatable, predictable process.
  • Helps in delivering consistent quality and results.

Outline path to Success

Checklists, in essence, can help you improve your performance. They outline the path to success, with minimal resistance, because they are infused with your experiences and learnings from the past.

As Edward Deming once said, “don’t look at the individual, look at the system.” You can start with a simple checklist, and infuse them with your experiences and learnings. Refine them as you use them by incorporating the lessons learned with each use.

checklists

make it-use it-refine it-agile checklists

You can create a checklist on pretty much anything! If I know that I’m going to be doing a specific activity more than once, I would create a checklist.

I follow a simple process to create them. Start with an outline of what tasks you would have to carry out to complete the activity. You don’t have to put in a lot of time and effort and come up with an elaborate checklist. Once you have the initial outline, just do ‘the thing’! And, as you do it, refine the list.

Yes, the initial list may not be complete. Yes, it may not be elaborate. But you have a checklist that you can improve on and make it better as you do it again and again. To ensure the ‘continuous improvement’, one of that last item that I almost always have is:
Is there any way I can improve this checklist?

Automate or Delegate

In his highly successful book The Four Hour Week, Tim Ferris suggests four simple steps to freedom:  Eliminate-Simplify-Automate-Delegate.

One of the side benefits of having checklists is that it helps you delegating the activity or individual tasks. It also helps you eliminate the unnecessary steps as you use them and optimize them. Once you have used a checklist to complete the activity couple of times, one of the three things could happen.

  • Automate:
    Find a way to automate the activity.
  • Delegate:
    If you cannot automate this process then find a way to delegate it to somebody who can follow your checklist.
  • Do It yourself:
    If you cannot delegate it and you are ‘forced’ to do it,  you should be able to finish it quickly and efficiently as you have optimized your checklist. This should allow you to finish the activity quickly, with a higher quality, minimizing, if not completely eliminating, the waste.

Enabling and Empowering

Checklists are enabling and empowering! They are ‘concentrated doses’ of experiences and learnings, acquired over multiple iterations. They help you in improving your Sprint Planning, the Backlog Refinement, Sprint Review, and many other events and activities.

Even the most expert among us can gain from searching out the patterns of mistakes and failures and putting a few checks in
– Atul Gawande,  The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Create one, use it, and you will realize how liberating they are! Let us know your experience in the comment below. And, don’t forget to share it with your peers and community.

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