Agile and Scrum Fundamental Bootcamp

Many people entering the Agile world see the Agile Manifesto as the beginning of the world, where it was really the summing up of much previous work. Anchor the ideas of Agile development in earlier work, giving the learners continuity from the past to the present.

The 2001 Manifesto for Agile Software Development is still the anchor document for all forms of Agile development. Make clear that the Agile Manifesto is a set of values, not a prescription for a process. Also, learners should be introduced to the fact that the values on the left are preferable to those on the right.

Many people come to Agile looking for “the Agile process”. However, while some processes and methodologies may be more supportive or common in Agile organizations than others, the mindset must come first. Introduce Agile as a mindset and explain that agility is achieved through both “being” and “doing” Agile. The Agile mindset is characterized by things like valuing early failure for learning, collaboration, continuous improvement, continuous discovery, etc.

Experiencing the Agile mindset is the best way to establish it in a learner. It allows the learner to experience situations in which the Agile mindset is likely to be different from their current way of working, so the learner can internalize the difference through experience and not just in concept.

One anchor of Agile development is incremental development. Introduce the concept and value of incremental development, and how it differs from effort-based or task-based management.

Many people, even understanding the idea of incremental development can’t see how to break work into small, value-centered work items and track their progress. Develop and practice techniques for breaking problems into value-based parts and tracking progress against them.

It is easy to lose sight of the cost of rework in incremental-iterative development. Introduce and highlight why Agile developers need to keep an eye

How is the Scrum theory implemented through time-boxes events, roles, rules and artifacts? How can these be used most effectively? We will experience why the Scrum framework is constructed as it is and how you as Scrum Master can effectively use Scrum to control risks and create maximum value.

Who supposed to be a good product owner? What Product Owner does in Scrum? Do they write story or maximize value? Why we need Scrum Master? Who decides Scrum Master for team? What’s the meaning of Self-Organized Development Team? Is Self-organizing team good enough or we need self- managed team? Developers are cross-function or Development Team is cross-functional?

Are you able to deliver truly done product? What “DONE” means in Scrum and why it is important? Workshop focus differentiating DONE and UNDONE but also bring discussion about Technical Debts.Participants has to learn meaning of DONE increment by defining definition in workshop. Why not to have technical debt is critical to growing organization? How Acceptance Criteria is different than Definition of DONE?

Why change is hard and what can be done to make it real? What organizational changes needed to see real benefits of Scrum?

Identifying and responding to non-functional requirements to ensure they don’t get lost in the process of defining product success and lead to hidden risks.

Using key metrics and visualizing them with cumulative flow diagrams to help see where work is and how to improve the flow from concept to reality. Helping product owners to focus upon the right metrics and avoid those metrics that drive undesirable behaviors in development teams and by stakeholders.

Understand the role of the product in relation to the development team, how best to support them and what they need from a product owner to be effective in their role. Working with stakeholders, keeping them informed of progress and risks, influencing their decision making and managing expectations.

How to measure success of an agile project in ever evolving requirement? Discussion around key metrics like business values, velocity chart, release burn down and sprint burn down. How to incorporate feedback in forecast and how to forecast project completion date.

How to start the Agile Transformation journey.