We’ve all been there. We show up to the sprint review, and a team is showing off technical specs, slides, or perhaps sharing their code. Rarely do they demo the increment they’ve created. And maybe they’re also not inviting anyone outside the team to be part of the conversation. As their coach, we want to …
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I began helping out a team recently. This team had been together for some time, but they still had a number of struggles. One of those struggles was sprint planning. They realized they could be getting more out of it, but they weren’t sure how. My first thought was to educate and then step in, …
I often get asked what to do when a Scrum adoption begins to stall. This is especially true to those in the earlier stages of adoption. Whenever these conversations occur, it inevitably leads to the same answer. I can’t help. I just don’t understand your context or your organization. Don’t misunderstand. I want to help, …
In my previous blog post, I talked about sprints in the ethereal discussing their similarities to deadlines and reminding us to be inquisitive of the world around us. However, I offered no practical advice. Today, I’d like to remedy that. Below, I tackle many common questions about sprints. Let’s get started. So What’s the Right …
Let’s talk about sprints. What’s the right length? When should they begin and end? On a Monday and Friday, respectively, or is another schedule more appropriate? Should we ever change the length of our sprints? These are all good questions, and we’ll get to them, but let’s start with something more fundamental. Why even have …
I often compare Scrum to the frame of a house. We can look at the frame to know the size and shape of our rooms and how the house joins together. However, it’s up to us to figure out what color to paint the walls and where to place the couch. The saying goes, “Scrum …
In my previous blog post, I talked about how I believe a Scrum Master should be trying to put him or herself out of a job. Put another way, we should master the art of actively doing nothing. Some agreed; some didn’t. Some thought the language was too strong. Others thought it was just right. However, …
In my last blog post, I promised to offer up some tricks and tweaks to help facilitate the daily scrum. Today, I intend to deliver on that promise. Before reading on, I encourage you to read Mastering the Daily Scrum. As a reminder, we previously discussed how to improve and focus our stand up; however, something …
5,000. That’s the number of daily scrums, or stand ups, I’ve been a part of in my career. There’s not a lot of things I’ve done 5,000 times so I wanted to share with you what I’ve learned. First, let’s remind ourselves why we’re there. Why have the meeting at all? Why every day? I like …
Today, I wanted to write about some flavors of a retro. For example, how do you guide a team that doesn’t want to address the elephant? However, I realized something was missing. How can I tackle the flavors when I haven’t discussed some facilitation fundamentals? So let’s get back to the basics of retrospectives. It’s always …
