What are ‘Coaching Techniques’ and how do they impact any coaching situation?

  There are many lists of coaching techniques; the following is fairly a fairly comprehensive list but exhaustive:

 The 5-minute pre-session Check-In – Let your clients complete a short questionnaire before each

coaching session. This helps both you and your clients to recognize their progress and success since the last

session.  You’ll find out if there were roadblocks and what they’ve been struggling with. It shows you what

bothers them most at the moment and what they want to focus on during their next session.

 Use the SMART goal setting technique in your coaching – SMART goal setting stands for Specific,

Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Based.

This technique brings a clear structure into goals.  Each goal or milestone comes with clear and verifiable elements

instead of vague resolutions.  The broad goal of “I want to grow my business” will be described in much more

detailed and action-oriented steps by the client. The SMART goal could be: “I will win five new clients for my

business this month by asking for referrals, creating two useful blog articles and social media networking”. 

 Let clients write down and share the gold nuggets after each session – Encourage your clients to share

their gold nuggets from each session with you; it leaves them with a clear picture of how much value they

received from your coaching. 

It’s easy to help them get going with just a few simple questions like: “What was the most valuable takeaway from
this session?”. This coaching technique helps you to find out the client’s “A-ha” moments and to avoid

misunderstandings. 

If all these notes are organized in a shared stream that is accessible to both you and the client you can reread and

recap these nuggets any time at later stages during the process.

 Ask open-ended questions – Open-ended questions allow your clients to include more information,

including feelings, attitudes, and understanding of the subject. This allows the coach to better access the

clients’ true thoughts and feelings on the topic. 

 Use the power of writing – Writing down plans and goals is the first step towards making them a reality.

It commits your clients to act, especially when they are shared and recorded with someone else (like with

you – their coach). 

Writing enhances your client’s power of observation and focuses during a change or development process. 

A study with two groups has shown that people who write down goals and make a weekly progress report achieved

their goals at a rate of 76%, whereas the participants of the group who didn’t write anything down achieved their

goals at a rate of only 36%. 

 Be fully present and focused – Take two minutes for yourself and breathe calmly before each session.

Once your meeting has started, try to avoid distractions and give your clients undivided attention. Show

your genuine interest and that you really care. This may sound self-evident but is an important step toward

building trust and a meaningful coaching relationship.

 Follow-Up with the client – Use regular questionnaires where clients share their progress, experiences,

success or challenges they might be facing. 

This ongoing feedback as a follow-up between sessions is a perfect way to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness

of the coaching. It shows your clients that you really care about their progress and gives them the feeling they’re

not alone with their challenges.

 The coaching journal of progress – A regular progress and reflection journal helps your clients to

develop and gain self-awareness. 

A coaching journal is similar to the ongoing feedback described before. Your clients can write down their emotions,

experiences, observations, challenges, success, thoughts, and feelings. They don’t have to wait until the next

sessions which might be in a week or two but can share what’s on their mind right at the moment where it happens.

A shared journal gives your clients the feeling that you’re always there for them and “listening” without the need

for your presence. They can write whenever they feel like it; at night, in the morning, during the day, at the train

station on the way to their workplace or while waiting for the doctor.

A coaching journal gives them the ability to focus on themselves only without any time pressure or distractions.

Once written down they can always reread and recap prior entries at a later stage of their process. Once these

thoughts are shared with you you’ll gain invaluable information that will take your coaching and mentoring to the

next level. 

 Homework assignment to strengthen accountability – No matter if you call it homework, worksheet,

questionnaire or action item. They all support the work you’ve been doing within a coaching session. They

help clients to reflect, act and achieve necessary milestones towards their bigger goal. 
Homework helps to see if and how the plans from each session are being applied; it helps clients to keep the focus

on their plans, ideas, and goals.

1. The GROW model – The GROW model is a simple method for goal setting and problem-solving in

coaching. It includes 4 stages:

2. G for Goal: The goal is what the client wants to accomplish. It should be defined as clearly as possible.

You could combine it with the SMART method described earlier

3. R for Reality: That is the status quo, where our client is right now.  The client describes his/her current

situation and how far she is away from her goal

4. O for Obstacles and Options: What are the obstacles (roadblocks) that keep your client from achieving

the goal? Once these obstacles are identified you can find ways to overcome them – the options.

5. W for Way forward: Once identified the options need to be converted into action steps that will take your

client to accomplish his/her goal.

6. A Shared To-Do list – The client commits to various action steps and plans during the coaching sessions.

Once they write down and share these ‘to-dos’ with you they actually put them into existence; they become

like a contract between you and the client and strengthens their accountability. 

Another benefit is that both of you know what is getting done and what isn’t at any moment during the process.

You immediately see where they procrastinate or struggle and when your support is needed.  The shared to-do list

helps to set priorities, achieve milestones faster and keep track of the small wins during a coaching process.

 “My goal is achieved” – It is a great thought experiment if you ask your client to exactly describe a

perfect day once the desired goal is achieved. 

It shouldn’t be just a vague description but a whole day from start to finish:

 How would he/she feel after waking up? 

 What would he/she do? 

 How would he/she feel? 

This technique will encourage the client to use his/her positive imagination and visualize what he/she truly desires. 

Afterward, you can work together to get the actual steps to that “miracle” where the goal is achieved.
  Use every session to become a better coach – Every single session offers you the chance to become a

better coach.  Take five minutes immediately after your client left and write down some thoughts; you can:

 Track reactions to questions of a client

 Think about methods and techniques you used in the session and how  they worked

 Reflect upon the overall success of the session

 Think about something you would do differently if you could “replay” the session?

What are the recommended ways to handle change in requirements during the middle of the sprint?

This is a very common scenario seen in the projects which are using Scrum Approach. The team should always be

prepared for that. But try to have a good conversation with the Product owner to not include in the current sprint

and deferred to the next sprint. Changes in requirements sometimes taken as feedback from the customer so that the

product can be improved. We should be ready to embrace this change.

As a tester, they should take the generic approach by writing the generic test cases (Login screen, user credentials).

Till the requirements are stable, try to wait if you are planning to automate the test cases.

As a developer, the same approach can be used where chances of changes are minimal. Try to code using design

patterns and oops concepts (Components or package independent of each other), so that change in one component

makes minimal changes in another.

How to decide the size of the iteration?

The selection of the iteration length should be guided by the following factors:

 The length of the release being worked on.

It means that if the team is working towards a release which is three months away, one-month iteration will give

only 2 opportunities to gather feedback which in most cases insufficient.

The general rule of thumb is that any project will benefit from at least 4-5 opportunities to get feedback. So, if a

project overall duration is 5 months above then it is worth to consider 4-week iteration. Otherwise, 2-3 weeks

iteration is a good choice.

  The amount of uncertainty.

When there is a great amount of uncertainty about the work to be done then short iterations will allow to get more

frequent feedback and built the correct product.

 The ease of getting feedback.

Choose an iteration to maximize the value of feedback that can be received from inside and outside the

organization.

 How long priorities can remain unchanged.

If there are chances of change in priorities then it better to go for short iterations. If we are going with long

iterations and there is some change in requirement then we need to wait for 4 weeks to implement them.

 The overhead of iterating.

There is a cost associated with each iteration as each iteration should be fully regression tested. If this is costly, then

the team may prefer 4-week duration

 How soon a feeling of urgency is established.

As long as the end date of a project is far in the future, we don’t feel pressure and work leisurely. The point is not to

put the team under more pressure. Rather, it is to take the total amount of stress they normally feel and distribute it
evenly across a suitable long iteration.

What are the challenges involved during a project Development in Scrum?

There are still a few challenges which the Scrum team face during the development phase.

 Non-availability of Product Owner at the site.

 During the development, some field issues or high priority bugs come up.

 Difficult to change the mindset of management from the traditional model to Agile.

 Some development efforts don’t easily fit into a time-boxed sprint. Therefore, Scrum doesn’t work for me.

This is a real problem. Several kinds of development resist being meaningfully squeezed into standard size

sprints. Here’s a partial list:

  New system architecture

 New complex user interface design

 Database ETL requiring extract, cleanse, transform, stage, and present data

 Developers accustomed to working autonomously may find that Scrum is unnecessary and slows them

down.

 Distributed team-Communication is the core issue among distributed teams. Different time zones and

conflicting working hours may impair overall effectiveness, and collaboration may be difficult in some

cases.

Though there are so many challenges, there are ways to handle each and every situation and deliver a quality

product with customer satisfaction.

5.
Can there be multiple teams for the same project? How to manage it?

Yes definitely there can be multiple teams for the same project. For example, the UI team, Service layer team, etc.

The team can be feature teams or component teams and can be geographically distributed.

Scrum Master role is very challenging in this type of multi-team handling collaboration and coordination. The

reason is the time gap between two different teams which makes it even more challenging.

But there are many ways by which it can be handled. There are 2 suggested frameworks available

 LeSS-Large Scale Scrum

The idea is to manage the complexity of large-scale development with ease.

It recommends multiple teams with the same product owner with multiple sprint backlogs but with one product

backlog.

Process-wise LeSS is same as that of scrum but with slight modification. Sprint planning is split into two parts. One

planning consists of representatives from all the teams where the team decides about “WHAT” the Product Backlog

items to be built in the next sprint. The second planning meeting will be done by the individual team about how the

PBI needs to be built.

The end of the sprint should also be synchronized. The sprint review meeting should be held in common with all

the business leaders and team and the stakeholders.

Similarly, retrospection can be a help in 2 parts. One which is common to all the whole project team and one with

the individual team so that the focus can be on individual team issues and work towards them to resolve them.

 SaFe- Scaled Agile framework.

Refer to interview questions Article? Question 17.

When to use which framework?

1. When you need to coordinate with hundreds or thousands of people in a big organization. SaFe is the

recommended framework.

2. When the transition from the Component level team to feature level team is difficult.

SaFe makes it easy even to handle the component level team through RTE and Program Board.

How to coordinate?

Scrum of Scrums: This is one of the meetings which happens daily with all the scrum masters and chief Product

Owner can facilitate it. It is the same as that of daily scrum but the focus is on a team level.

Each team sends out one member to participate and answer the following questions:

 What did the team finish/achieved?

 What does the team plan to finish today?

 Are there any impediments? If yes how we can resolve them.

 Common Retrospectives.

 Common Sprint Planning

 Common sprint reviews

Sprint Scheduling-All the teams can start and ends at the same time. But there can be a difference in that also. It

makes our coordination and communication easy. They can also have 1-2 days gap in starting the next sprint which

is good for product owner not to attend all the meetings

Effort Estimations: A very important aspect of Scrum Planning. In the case of the same technique of effort,

estimation should be used like Planning poker, shirt size estimation, etc. If story points are used all teams have to

agree on the same metric and a common scale to use.

What are the different stages of a team will go through the group development?

Every team will go through 4 stages of group development which is Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing.

 Forming- Most team members are new, polite and humble in this stage also the roles and

responsibilities are not clear to the team.

  Storming- This is a situation where there is a clash between a few team members due to their

roles and responsibilities, their work or some other issues. Retrospection there will be a huge

qiosk. Everybody has their own working style due to which there will be a conflict between many

team members due to different sorts of reasons. This is where the team fails.

 Norming- In this phase of development people start resolving their issues, differences and start

appreciating their colleagues for the work. This is a very good stage as the team is moving

towards the goal of self-organization.

 Performing- In this phase, the development team has one sprint goal and they all work towards it,

this is where hard work pays and the project is released with the best quality. It is easy to be part

of such a team where any disruption will not alter their sprint goal.

 The same is depicted in the figure below.

What is refactoring?

Ron Jeffries says: In Agile, the design must simply start simple and grow up. The way to do this is refactoring.

Refactoring refers to changing the structure but not the behavior of the code. For Example: Suppose in the code

base we have two methods and each has 3 identical statements. These statements can be extracted from this code

and put it into some new method and both these methods can call the new method. This refactoring slightly

improves the readability and maintainability of the program as the duplicated code is moved to a new place. There

are so many tools available with which you can run in your code base and it will help you in finding out the

duplicity of code. In this way, the structure of the code is changed but not the behavior.

Refactoring is not only crucial to TDD but it also helps prevent code rot. Code rot is the typical syndrome in which

a product is released its code is allowed to decay after a few years then an entire rewrite is required. By constantly

refactoring and fixing small problems before they become big problems, we can keep our applications rot free.
When a refactoring opportunity is identified have a conversation with product owners and scrum master and get

that added as part of a product backlog. At the end of 2-3-hour long programming session spend at least 20-30

minutes in cleaning up something you noticed as you were touching or looking at existing code.

Always discuss refactoring in your next retrospection inkling your product owner.

My suggestion is to include them as part of your sprint planning and all team members should collectively work on

that.

What is the scrum of scrums?

This is one of the meetings which happens daily with all the scrum masters and chief Product Owner can

facilitate it. It is the same as that of a daily scrum but the focus is on a team level.

Each team sends out one member to participate and answer the following questions:

 What did the team finish/achieved?

 What does the team plan to finish today?

 Are there any impediments? If yes how we can resolve them.

What are the sprint burndown and burnup charts?

These charts help to keep track of the progress of the sprint. Burn up charts indicates the amount of work completed

in the sprint and the burndown chart indicates the amount of work remaining in the sprint

The Product Owner determines the amount of remaining work and compares it to the remaining work of the

previous Sprints and forecasts the completion date of the project.

In the Burn-Down chart, the vertical axis (remaining work) shows the amount of work (which is a sum of all the

estimates for each item in the Product Backlog), and the horizontal axis shows the amount of time passed from the

beginning of the project or the number of Sprints passed.

We usually add another line to present the uniform distribution of the volume of the work across the initially

estimated number of sprints. This line acts as our planned progress and will be used to compare to our actual

values.
In the above chart, we can expect the project to be completed earlier than initially planned.

In the Burn-Up chart, the vertical axis is the amount of work and is measured in units or story points, and the

horizontal axis is time, usually measured in days.

Each day you can see the amount of work completed and the total amount of work. The distance between the two

lines is thus the amount of work remaining. When the two lines meet, the project will be complete. This is a

powerful measure of how close you are to completion of the project.

How to split a user story?

Bill Wake has given us the mnemonic INVEST which help us in writing a well-formed User Story.
Splitting a story is not an easy task.

Let us first discuss different techniques on how to split a user story.

 Split by user roles-Administrators interact with the system in a different way than users. It a very good

way of splitting the user stories by user roles.

 Split by capabilities offered.-Capabilities example like sorting and searching. Further sorting and

searching may further split into different user stories.

 Split by user personas -Even in the same role, users interact with the system in various different ways. A

handicapped person interacts in a different way, a casual user in a different way as he needs intuitive

things, a power user needs lots of short cuts, etc.

 Split by target device- User can interact with our system not only using a standard computer but also

using mobile, ipad etc.So this is also a good way of splitting a user story.

For detailed information check my blog below.

The definition of "Done" describes the work that must be completed for every Product Backlog item before
it can be deemed releasable. What should the Development Team do when, during the Sprint, it finds out
that a problem outside of their control blocks them from doing all this work?

Ideally, the team should immediately raise the issue to the Scrum Master as an impediment. Scrum Master is

responsible to take care of these kinds of problems, or impediments that stop the dev team from achieving the

Sprint Goal and facilitate a team’s optimum performance. But, it is the responsibility of the team to communicate

with the Scrum Master about what impediments are obstructing them. This communication occurs every day in the

daily Scrum and the main purpose of it is to raise any impediments and refine the plan to meet the Sprint Goal.

When might a Sprint be abnormally terminated?

This typically happens when the Sprint Goal becomes obsolete. A Sprint can be cancelled before the Sprint time-

box is over. A Sprint would be cancelled if the Sprint Goal becomes obsolete. This might occur if the company

changes direction or if market or technology conditions change. The abnormal termination might also occur if the

team gets into the Sprint partway and finds that the work is going to consume too much time than expected in sprint

planning.

When multiple teams work together on the same product, should each team maintains a separate Product
Backlog?

No. One product has one Product Backlog, regardless of how many teams are working on that project. It is easy for

the Development teams to coordinate with other teams if one product backlog is followed throughout the project.

When do Development Team members become the exclusive owners of a Sprint Backlog item?

Never. All Sprint Backlog Items are "owned" by the entire Development Team, even though each one may be done

by an individual development team member. Sprint Backlog and all of its items are collectively owned by the

Development Team. No individual team member can claim ownership over an item as this would block

communication and collaboration among the team members.

An organization has decided to adopt Scrum, but management wants to change the terminology to fit with
terminology already used. What will likely happen if this is done?

Without a new vocabulary as a reminder for the change, very little change may actually happen. Also, the

organization may not understand what has changed with Scrum and the benefits of Scrum may be lost.

Scrum adoption is good, but this massive shift needs complete dedication. The organizations that are implementing

the Scrum practices every day can be successful in Scrum adoption. If Scrum is implemented with all the team

members on a daily basis can increase the collaboration and a quick product delivery. So, it is recommended to

implement only Scrum methodology without clubbing any other methodology as it can be applied to any complex

project and will meet the project deadlines within a timeline, making the customer happy!

The Development Team should not be interrupted during the Sprint. The Sprint Goal should remain intact.
These are the conditions that foster creativity, quality, and productivity. Based on this, can you say for
certain that the Sprint Backlog does not change during the Sprint?

It can change. The Sprint Backlog makes visible all of the work that the Development Team identifies as necessary

to meet the Sprint Goal. The Development Team modifies the Sprint Backlog throughout the Sprint, and the Sprint

Backlog emerges during the Sprint. If the work appears to be different than expected, the dev team collaborate with

the PO to negotiate the scope of the Sprint Backlog within the Sprint and adds more PBIs related to the current

Sprint if necessary.

When many Development Teams are working on a single product, what best describes the definition of
"done?"

All Development Teams must have a definition of "done" that makes their combined work potentially releasable.

Each Scrum team consists of its own ‘Definition of Done’. Definition of Done defines the acceptance criteria across

all User Stories. Scrum requires an Increment to be releasable. This is an Increment of product. Many teams

working on a single product are expected to deliver the quality of work.

Is it mandatory that the product increment be released to production at the end of each Sprint?
No. The product increment should be usable and releasable at the end of every Sprint, but it does not have to be

released. In Scrum, it is not mandatory to release each increment without accepting the acceptance criteria. The

developed increments should have a value according to the customer’s needs. In short, you can say that it should be

usable and releasable at the end of every Sprint without releasing to the production.

The CEO asks the Development Team to add a "very important" item to a Sprint that is in progress. What
should the Development Team do?

Inform the Product Owner so he/she can work with the CEO. The items selected for a Sprint have been selected as

most valuable with the Product Owner. The items serve the Sprint's goal. No changes should be made that endanger

the Sprint Goal. No one external to the Scrum Team can force changes on the Development Team (Sprint Backlog)

and the Product Owner (Product Backlog).

During a Sprint, a Development Team determines that it will not be able to finish the complete forecast. Who
should be present to review and adjust the Sprint work selected?

The Product Owner and the Development Team. During the Sprint, the scope may be clarified and renegotiated

between the Product Owner and Development Team as more is learned. As issues emerge, changes can be made to

the sprint backlog to accomplish the Sprint Goal. The Development Team will then re-negotiate with the Product

Owner regarding the Sprint Backlog. Although the Sprint Goal is fixed during the Sprint, the Sprint Backlog is not.

The Product Owner's authority to change and update the Product Backlog is typically unlimited. Is there
ever any exception?

No. The entire organization must always respect a Product Owner's decisions. For the Product Owner to succeed,

the entire organization must respect his or her decisions. No one is allowed to tell the Development Team to work

from a different set of requirements, and the Development Team isn't allowed to act on what anyone else says. The

PO can remove the product backlog items if he/she feels that is not a high priority one. Anyone can add an item to

the product backlog. But, it is the PO who decides what happens to the PBI.

Why is the definition of "Done" so important to the Product Owner?

Firstly, it assures the Increment reviewed at the Sprint review is usable so the Product Owner may choose to release

it. Secondly, it creates transparency regarding progress within the Scrum Team. All Scrum Team members must

have a shared understanding of what it means for work to  complete, to ensure transparency. This is the definition

of "Done" for the Scrum Team and is used to assess when work is complete on the product Increment. The

Increment reviewed at the Sprint Review must be usable, so a Product Owner may choose to immediately release it.

The Development Team finds out during the Sprint that they aren't likely to build everything they
forecasted. What would you expect the Product Owner to do?

Re-work the selected Product Backlog items with the Development Team to meet the Sprint Goal. During the

Sprint scope may be clarified and re-negotiated between the Product Owner and Development Team as more is

learned. The development team looks to the product owner for product backlog, for alignment and direction on the

delivery of value through the sprint goal achievement through the backlog implementation. The backlog can be

changed to achieve the Sprint goal, but PO is responsible for value delivered through the implementation of

backlog to achieve a sprint goal.

It is usually seen that learning turns into 'validated learning' when assumptions and goals can be assessed
through results. What is a key way for a Product Owner to apply validated learning?

Release an Increment to the market to learn about the business assumptions built into the product. The Product

Owner manages Product Backlog against the assumption that value will be generated. This assumption remains

invalidated when not checked against users and market. The Product Owner drives iterative development from an

exploratory attitude, aiming at incremental progress through continuing discovery and validated learning.

Can the value delivered by a product only be determined by revenue?

No. In Scrum, Product Owner takes care of the Product Value in order to generate, deliver, and maintain a

successful product. Value is likely to vary across the products and organizations. The value of the product depends

on the context of the product which you are developing.

What pre-conditions must be fulfilled in order to allow Sprint Planning to begin?

There are no such pre-conditions. Sprint Planning serves to plan the work to be performed in the Sprint. This plan is

created by the collaborative work of the entire Scrum Team. Sprint Planning is time-boxed to a maximum of eight

hours for a one-month Sprint. What can be achieved in this time-box may be influenced by additional practices that

are however not prescribed by Scrum.

Is Sprint Review the only time during which stakeholder’s feedback is taken into account?

No. A Product Owner engages actively and regularly with the Stakeholders. However, to limit the disturbance to

the development progress and keep a focus of the Development team high, the key Stakeholders are allowed to take

part only in the Sprint Review meeting. However, any Scrum team member can interact with them at any time.

How does an organization know that a product built through Scrum is successful?

By releasing often, and updating key performance indicators (KPIs) on value after every release and feeding this

information back into work on the Product Backlog. Scrum Teams deliver products iteratively and incrementally,

maximizing opportunities for feedback. If a product isn't released, the opportunity to capture user and market

feedback is lost. By releasing every increment and updating the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) on value after

every release can help to know the product built through Scrum is successful.

What variables should a Product Owner consider when ordering the Product Backlog?

Whatever is the most appropriate for the Product Owner to achieve the product's goals and to optimize the value

received. The Product Owner is responsible for ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and

missions, thereby optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs. How this is done, and what

value means, may vary widely across the organizations.

In order to make investment decisions, the Product Owner is likely to look at the Total Cost of Ownership
(TCO) of the product being built. What costs will a Product Owner take into account?
The owner of a product is not only accountable for the development and release of a product, but also the cost of

maintaining and operating the product. If a person 'owns' the product, he/she can be expected to be responsible for

the complete lifecycle of a product.

How important is it for a Product Owner to order Product Backlog items by value points?

It is a good practice, keeping in mind that market reception is the best measure of value. Indications of value on

Product Backlog are useful but are only a prediction until validated against users and market.

Should each Sprint Backlog item be owned by a member of the Development Team?

No. Single members might handle most or all of the work of a particular Sprint Backlog item, but responsibility

remains for the whole team. When each member of the Development team owns the Sprint Backlog items, the team

will derail from the core-value of Agile which is nothing but the ‘Collaboration’.

A representative of the customer has asked the Development Team to add a very important item to an
ongoing Sprint. What should they do?

Refer the representative to the Product Owner to discuss it. If the customer is asking for adding an item to an
ongoing Sprint, adding it in collaboration with the Product Owner is the best-suited way to add any new item to the
Sprint. Because adding a new item to the product backlog without asking the product owner may result in removing
a transparency and undermining trust with the Product Owner.

What should we consider in setting the time-box for Sprints?

Timeboxing is the process of allotting a fixed and maximum unit of time for an activity. That allotted unit of time is

a timebox. The goal of timeboxing is to define and limit the amount of time dedicated to an activity. The time-box

set for the Sprints should not be longer than one month and should be selected considering different factors such as

the risk and delivery time.

Because adding a new item to the product backlog without asking the product owner may result in removing a

transparency and undermining trust with the Product Owner.

A Development Team with 5 members has been using 15 minute Daily Scrums. Three new members have
joined the team. How long should the Daily Scrum meetings be after that?
15 minutes. The purpose of the Daily Scrum meeting is to carry out communication between the team members.

The Scrum meeting is timeboxed to 15 minutes irrespective of the team-size and is held at the same time and place

each day to reduce complexity. Also, it is usually held in the morning time when maximum team members gather to

plan work for the day.

Who has the authority to cancel a Sprint?

Product Owner.The Sprint can be called off before ending up the Sprint time-box. Only the Product Owner has the

authority to cancel a Sprint. This happens when the Product Owner realizes that it makes no sense to finish the

Sprint, as defined in Sprint Backlog. The PO may cancel the sprint under the influence of any Stakeholder, the

development team, or the Scrum Master.

For projects which have multiple teams, how many product backlog(s) and product owner(s) should be
there?

There should be one Product Backlog and one Product Owner. Many Scrum teams, each with a Scrum Master can

pull work items from a single product backlog and the presence of the product owners depend on the number of

product backlogs. A certain project should have only one Product Backlog and one Product Backlog should only

have one Product Owner otherwise, it would be difficult to deliver the product.

To deliver a single product, three Development teams are formed. How many Product Owners are needed?

One. Multiple Scrum teams, each with a Scrum Master can drag their work items from a single product backlog and

the presence of the product owners depend on the number of product backlogs. A certain project should have only

one Product Backlog and one Product Backlog should only have one Product Owner otherwise, it would be difficult

to deliver the product.

A Scrum Team crafts the following Sprint Goal: “All the Sprint code should have passed 100% automated
unit tests”- Is it an appropriate goal?

It is not an appropriate goal since Sprint Goal should be about expected business value.

An important executive wants the Development Team to take a highly critical feature in the current Sprint.
What should be the Development Team’s course of action?
The development team should ask the executive to work with the Product Owner. The product owner is the voice of

the executives in the process of communicative discovery. How the feature is developed is up to the PO and the

Scrum Team, and depends on the nature of the product under deployment and the availability of the stakeholders.

The product owner represents the needs and desires of the executive to the development team and prioritizes their

work that helps the team to do it in the right way.

Since the Scrum team is self-organizing, do you think it can create an additional role within the Scrum?

No. The benefit of forming self-organizing teams is not that the team identifies some additional role within the

scrum for its work that a manager has missed. Instead, it is that by enabling the team to self-organize, it is

motivated to completely own the problem of performing the work at its best. In short, a self-organizing team is a

group of motivated individuals who have the authority and ability to take decisions and adjusting to changing

demands quickly and easily working together towards a goal.

A customer wants to communicate something very relevant and important about the product to the
Development Team. Who should he/she talk to?

The product owner only. A customer shouldn’t spend time detailing the product issues to the development team,

this is the job of a product owner. The product owner is responsible for the project success and is finally responding

to the customers, team and to the company. He/she is the voice of the customer to the development team and

ensures that all channels of communication are open and that project has ample amount of support needed to

succeed.

In a retrospective, a Scrum team decides to revise the Sprint length. Does the Product Owner need to agree
on the new Sprint length?

Yes, the length of the sprint can be changed but it should be fixed before starting the sprint. The product owner

needs to ensure that the sprint is short enough to limit business risk and also short enough so that the team can

synchronize their development work with other business events. Finalized Sprint length cannot be longer than 4

weeks (1 month).
The Scrum Team gathers for Sprint Planning meeting. The Product Owner has some stories, but the team
finds that stories do not provide enough information to make a forecast. What according to you is the
immediate next thing to do?

The Development Team should it transparent that they cannot make a forecast with insufficient information, and

negotiate with Product Owner on refining the stories to a Ready state. In scrum, each and every iteration starts with

a sprint planning meeting. During this meeting, the PO and the team discuss which stories a team will handle that

sprint. The Product Owner needs to help clarify the selected Product Backlog Items. Scrum Master can also coach

the Product Owner on how to accomplish this viz. by having regular Backlog Refinement sessions. Later, the team

can also discuss in Retrospective.

Given the complex product and its relevance to multiple departments, a Scrum Team expects that they need
to invite many stakeholders for Sprint Review. It estimates that the review will take more than 4 hours. Can
it increase the Sprint review duration?

No. After developing a product increment at the end of each sprint, a Sprint Review meeting is held. The Sprint

Review meeting provides a platform to the team members to show what they accomplished during the sprint.

Scrum events are time-boxed to eliminate waste and reduce risks. The team needs to address the root causes and

adhere to the time-bo

A Development Team maintains a Sprint burn-down to track estimated work remaining. In the middle of
the Sprint, the burndown graph shows an upward Spike. What does it indicate?

This indicates that the development team added new work. The line indicating effort remaining in the burndown

graph varies from team to team and day to day. If more work items (user stories and issues) are added after the

sprint started then this shows an upward spike. The spike indicates added work and the Product Owner cannot add

new work to Sprint Backlog without the consent of the Team.

After Sprint Planning, the Product Backlog Items selected into the Sprint backlog are frozen and cannot be
modified. In that case, is the only way to modify it is to have the Product Owner cancel the Sprint?

No. The Sprint Goal gives some flexibility to the Development Team. If the work turns out to be different than

expected, the Development Team collaborates with the Product Owner to negotiate the scope of the Sprint Backlog

within the Sprint. In that case, the development team discusses with the PO and reaches the conclusion.
Where did Scrum come from?

 The development of the Scrum framework is not linear; different people did independent studies and experiments

and gradually the ideas and concepts coalesced into what we know today as Scrum.

Probably the first publication that compared product development to the game of rugby, moving the scrum down

the field, was the white paper “The New New Product Development Game” by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro

Nonaka, published in the Harvard Business Review in January 1986.

In this whitepaper, the authors researched the product development methods of prominent and successful

companies and concluded that, in the main, success relied upon:

 Built-in instability

 Self-organizing project teams

 Overlapping development phases

 “Multilearning” 

 Subtle control

 Organizational transfer of learning

They called such processes ‘Holistic Methods’ as opposed to the waterfall ‘sequential’ processes.

Some sources attribute the ‘invention’ of Scrum to Jeff Sutherland, John Scumniotales and Jeff McKenna in 1993

when they implemented Scrum at the Easel Corporation.

Independently, Ken Schwaber, as a software product development manager in the 1980s and early 1990s,

recognised patterns of failure in many product development initiatives that used ‘waterfall’ approaches.

Ken tells the story that he approached a process engineering company, described the software development

environment and ‘waterfall’ process; he was told that a ‘defined process’ such as ‘waterfall’ was very unlikely to

succeed consistently in a software development environment; what is needed is an ‘empirical process’ that allows

process change from feedback from short experiments.

You would need to ask Jeff or Ken how these 2 first came together to ‘compare notes’ but they collaborated to

produce the first public presentation of Scrum at OOPSLA 1995.

There have been many other people involved with the development of the Scrum framework; people such as Jim

Coplien and Mike Beedle.

Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle published the first Scrum book, ‘Agile Software Development with Scrum’, in

2001.

How does the Inspect and Adapt process work during a Sprint?

The Inspect and Adapt process is important throughout the Sprint but especially during the ceremonies:

 Sprint Planning – During Sprint Planning it is important to Inspect:

o The comments from the previous Sprint Review to ascertain if any remedial work is needed and

Adapt the expected velocity if needed

o The Risk Log to determine if any significant mitigation actions are required for high risks in the

Sprint and Adapt the expected velocity if needed

 Daily Scrum – During the Daily Scrum it is important to Inspect the progress toward the Sprint Goal and

if there are any concerns about the progress, consideration must be given to Adapting the current priorities,

task assignments and/or work practices

 Scrum Review – During the Scrum Review it is important to Inspect:

o The increment produced to discover if any Adaptations (changes) are required and the priority of

those Adaptations

o The Product Backlog to determine if it needs to be Adapted in the light of any new PBI required,

any PBI that can be removed and any reprioritization required

o The Release Plan to determine whether it needs to be Adapted considering the experience gained

so far during the Release development period

 Scrum Retrospective – During the Scrum Retrospective it is important that the team Inspect:

o What had gone well during the Sprint

o What had not gone well during the Sprint

The results of these Inspections should lead the team in considering the Adaption of the process that they followed
Why are the Scrum Pillars of Transparency, Inspection and Adaptation so important?

The

empirical process control theory asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on

what is known ie at defined points within an overall control process, teams must inspect what has happened and,

from that experience, adapt the process to what will happen.

The Scrum framework is founded on empirical process control theory so the included ‘Transparency, Inspect and

Adapt’ processes are indispensable.

 Transparency

Scrum relies on transparency. Decisions to optimize value and control risk are made based on the perceived state of

the artifacts. If the transparency of artifacts is incomplete, these decisions can be flawed, the value may diminish

and risk may increase.

 Inspection 

Scrum users must frequently inspect Scrum artefacts and progress toward a Sprint Goal to detect undesirable

variances. Their inspection should not be so frequent that inspection gets in the way of the work. 

 Adaptation 
If an inspector determines that one or more aspects of a process deviate outside acceptable limits and that the

resulting product will be unacceptable, the process or the material being processed must be adjusted. An adjustment

must be made as soon as possible to minimize further deviation. 

Transparency and Inspection are important in the Daily Scrums and Sprint Reviews.  Although Adaptation is

mainly considered during the Sprint Retrospective, it should be considered at any time during the Sprint if the

current process is significantly detrimental to the best value being achieved.

What are ‘divergent’ and ‘convergent’ thinking?

When problem-solving and idea creation is needed, for example when constructing the Product Backlog from a

product Vision, Objectives and Expected Benefits, there are 2 strategies that are usually used, divergent and

convergent thinking.

Divergent Thinking

The “divergent thinking” strategy used to solve problems is the proposal of multiple possible solutions then

examining each to determine the solution that will work.

In a ‘problem solving’ workshop, the participants are asked for any ideas individually; writing on ‘sticky notes’ is a

good idea.  The results are analyzed to see if there is any overlap and the participants agree on a single list of

potential solutions.

Brainstorming and free writing are two processes that involve divergent thinking.

During the analysis of the potential solutions unexpected combinations may be made, information may be changed

into unanticipated forms, connections among remote associates may be identified. In divergent thinking, a single

question returns multiple answers and though the answers vary considerably depending on the workshop
participants, all answers are of equal value; each proposed solution may not have existed before and therefore may

be novel, unusual or surprising.

Eight elements of divergent thinking:

 Complexity – The capacity to think of difficult, multi-layered or intricate products or ideas

 Curiosity – The personality characteristic of asking questions, learning to get more knowledge/information

about something and of being able to go deeper into ideas

 Elaboration – The skill of adding to, building from or enhancing a product or an idea

 Flexibility – The capability of creating different perceptions or categories from which a range of different

ideas may be produced

 Fluency – The skill of producing many ideas so as to have an increase in the number of potential solutions

 Imagination – The capability of dreaming up or inventing novel products or ideas; to be original

 Originality – The skill of coming up with fresh, unusual, unique, extremely different or completely new

products or ideas

 Risk-taking – The readiness to be courageous and adventuresome

Divergent thinking has been detected in people with personality characteristics such as curiosity, nonconformity,

persistence, and readiness to take risks.

An extreme example of divergent thinking was when Twitter developed an online service that did not have any

obvious practical application.  The company deployed a basic application to find out how people used it and, based

on the findings, refined the application. Though launching something and finding out what the market for it is only

after the launch doesn’t have to be a bullet-proof strategy (in most cases it is not), this worked for Twitter.

Convergent Thinking
Once the divergent thing ‘phase’ of the problem-solving session has been ‘completed’, the workshop participants

use convergent thinking to bring together the different ideas to determine a single best solution.

The term “convergent thinking” was ‘created by Joy Paul Guilford. He came up with the term as an opposite term

to “divergent thinking”.  

Convergent thinking needs speed, logic, and accuracy and relies on identifying the known, reapplying techniques

and amassing stored information. 

A vital part of convergent thinking is that it produces one best answer; you either have a right answer or a wrong

one.

An example of where convergent thinking would be used is when the problem is:

“If there are 3 potential outsourcing companies, which one do we choose?”

This would require listing all the criteria that the ‘buying’ company need from an outsourcing company and

examining each to see which has the best ‘off-the-shelf’ fit or maybe which is open to negotiate to meet all the

required criteria.

Summary

 Divergent thinking is used to go from one stated problem to many potential solutions.

 Convergent thinking is used to form multiple potential solutions to the correct one.

How can a group of people reach a final decision during Scrum project implementation?

Making decisions in a group has its advantages and disadvantages; the main advantage is that there will be more

information and data available by which to make the decision; the main disadvantage is that it can take a significant

amount of time.

Let us consider first a jury for a trial.  The decision that they must make is ‘black and white’ or binary; is

the defendant guilty or not guilty?

A jury session usually starts with a vote amongst the jurors, guilty or not guilty.  There follows a

discussion between people on either side why they have the opinion that they have.  By this means,
each juror hears opinions about pieces of evidence that they may have forgotten or dismissed and the

relative importance of different pieces of evidence.

After a set time, another vote is taken to see in which direction the overall opinion is ‘going’.

It depends on whether a majority or unanimous verdict is required; if majority, once the requisite number

of people all vote the same way, the decision is made; if unanimous, there is a danger that the longer the

discussions go on, those in the minority will vote with the rest just to ‘get it over with’.

There is another decision that a jury can make, they cannot agree to the set majority or unanimous

parameters and inform the judge.

But not all decisions are ‘black and white’, most represent a range of options that must be chosen from.

The following are the major recognized ways in which groups of people can come to a decision:

 Consensus decision-making

 At the start of the decision making ‘workshop’, some participants will have their own opinion of

which way the decision should go usually based on their own or their ‘departments’ best interest.

However, the aim of the consensus process is to reach a decision in the best interest of the

whole.

 The first thing a facilitator must do is to establish the agreed boundaries of the possible decision

spectrum; for an extreme example, if the decision is to be made about new products in a

consumer product manufacturing organization, you wouldn’t expect the boundaries of the

spectrum to include ‘Make a spacecraft’.  However, the facilitator must not allow the group to

dismiss reasonable innovative ideas.

  Much as in a jury, proponents or ‘champions’ of each possible solution put forward their reasons;

others listen and ask direct questions to further understand the reasons from their own frame of

reference.

 In this way, the group opinion gravitates in one direction.  Eventually, those in the minority,

unless vehemently opposed to the majority, agree to ‘let’s see how it goes and review later’.

 Trying to reach consensus avoids "winners" and "losers". 

 Voting-based methods

Voting of some form will always form part of any decision-making process.  In all discussion-

based decision-making, votes are solicited at regular intervals to get a ‘snapshot’ of the group’s

opinions and to decide in which direction further discussion would be beneficial.

Let us see all the voting processes in detail that may be used:

 Range voting – Each participant gives each option a score based on an agreed scale and the

option with the highest average is chosen.

This method has been shown to produce the highest participant satisfaction with the result

compared to other common voting methods.

 Majority – A majority requires support from more than 50% of the members of the group.  Thus,

the bar for action is lower than with unanimity and a group of "losers" is implicit to this rule.

Majority voting is not considered suitable for business group decision making unless a great deal

of discussion has taken place beforehand.

 ‘First past the post’ –  With ‘first past the post’, each participant votes for one option; the option

that receives the greatest number of votes is taken as the decision.

The problem with this voting method is that the winning option may only be supported by a minority of

the participants; it is unlikely that those in the majority will actively support the decision.

 Delphi method 

This method is a structured communication technique for groups, originally developed for collaborative

forecasting.  It involves ‘experts’ answering a series of questionnaires and after each questionnaire is

completed, a facilitator presents anonymized results and the reasons for those results.  The idea is that

each expert modifies their opinion based on the reasons and it is expected that the range of opinions

becomes smaller and converges with the ‘best’ decision.

You can possibly see that Consensus decision making is a less structured version of Delphi; all

workshop participants are experts in their own field, but their opinions are not anonymized.

 Dotmocracy 

Using this method, participants are asked to place ‘sticky dots’ or use maker pens to indicate for which

option they vote for.  The may be given one vote or a range, identified by colors, such as ‘I want this one’

(green), ‘I would be OK with this one’ (orange) and ‘I do not want this one’ (red).

There are different ways of using the results:

 ‘First past the post’ – Like the description of this above, the decision to be adopted would not be

the option that the majority voted for but also the option that the least number of participants that

voted against it.

 Removing ‘outliers’ – Options at either end of the ‘decision spectrum’ can be removed from

consideration and further discussion can take place on a reduced set of options with further

dotmocracy votes at intervals to remove other outliers.

 The disadvantage of this way is that innovative options may be dismissed too early.

What are facilitative listening techniques?

with many facilitation tools, facilitative listening is perhaps most useful when there is a chance that conflict may

arise.  Facilitative listening is sometimes known as ‘active listening’ and is ultimately about making sure

that all group participants are properly listening to each other.

The following are techniques to help with facilitative listening:

 Paraphrasing

It may be that the listener does not totally understand the statements being made by someone:

 The listener could ask the speaker to restate their argument using different words

 The listener could state their understanding of the speaker’s words but in the listeners’

vocabulary

Both of these are examples of paraphrasing.

Part of your responsibility as a facilitator is to be aware of the listeners ‘body language’ and if you believe

that one or more are not fully understanding what is being said, you could ask:

1. The speaker to paraphrase their statements

2. A listener to paraphrase their understanding and confirm with the speaker.

 Mirroring

Workshops are set up for participants to express themselves but more than just space for expression is

needed. If a participant speaks without a sense of being heard, they are likely to either ramp up their
expression or else shut down neither of which is desirable for collaborative decision making. Mirroring

requires that the speaker can feel that they have been listened to.

Mirroring may take a variety of forms:

 After several people have spoken, a facilitator gives a summary of what has been said so far 

 The facilitator can offer a direct paraphrasing back to someone who's just spoken, offering a

restatement of the feelings and main points of what was said 

 The facilitator or a workshop scribe can write key points onto a shared display that everyone

present can view. 

 After a general discussion, a synthesized statement may be drafted by one or a few people

based on what was said

Mirroring may happen in the moment of a session or in after/between sessions as part of a longer,

iterative process.

The effectiveness of Mirroring may be enhanced by checking with those reflected to see if the Mirroring

was accurate.

Not all the Mirroring needs to be done by one central facilitator.  A facilitator can also invite others to

participate in Mirroring, whether in the whole group or in pairs or small groups.

Mirroring summarizes the state of current knowledge.  Once what is now known is acknowledged, that

naturally opens space for new ideas and creativity to emerge, whether for one participant in a meeting or

for a group as a whole.

 Making space

Participants in a decision-making workshop need to be focused especially when listening.  Therefore,

they need a space where they will be comfortable and without distractions.

As a facilitator, ensure that the workshop space:

1. Has no external distractions; noise from roadworks, air-conditioning rattling, next to a noisy office

etc

2. Is it a comfortable temperature
 3. Has sufficient refreshment facilities available

4. Has enough space to accommodate the number of participants and ‘break-out’ sessions

 Stacking

This technique to aid facilitative listening is called ‘Taking Stack’ and its purpose is to facilitate discussion

and decision making in which all participants have equal say in a conversation.  Otherwise, in a

structure-less setting, an individual or a small group of people could easily dominate and shut out other

participants.

For this method, one group participant needs to fill the role of the Stack Keeper whose responsibility is to

structure and order the dialogue of the decision-making process. 

“The Stack” is the order of participants who are speaking.  If a participant raises their hand to say

something, the Stack Keeper puts them on “Stack”; their name is put at the bottom of stack list.  When

the person at the top of Stack has finished speaking, the Stack Keeper crosses their names off and

announces who the next two participants on the stack are. 

Thus, the Stack Keeper is the person responsible for identifying who speaks and when. The Stack

Keeper must constantly be paying attention and looking around the room to see who wants to speak.

There are other hand gestures to indicate a request for more immediate contribution when someone else

is speaking:

 Direct Response

If a participant has a “direct response” to something that another group member said, they should make

the hand motion shown in the picture (index fingers out, thumbs up, moving hands up and down in

opposite directions). A “direct response” is only a correction to something that was incorrectly stated by
another participant, an answer to a question that another participant had, or that is so important that it

must be said at this moment.

The Stack Keeper allows this participant to state their response before the conversation goes on. 

Correct Usage: “You asked who volunteered to take over your shift? That was me.” OR “Actually, the

store spent $100 dollars yesterday, not $1,000.”

Incorrect Usage: “I disagree with what you just said, because…” 

 Clarifying Question

Any participant may make the hand gesture in the picture to indicate that they want to ask a “clarifying

question.”  

The Stack Keeper allows them to ask their question before stack goes on. 

Correct Usage: “Wait, what were our expenses last week?”

Incorrect Usage: “How can you say that when you disagreed with Jeremy’s point?”

 Point of Process

If a participant feels that the group discussion is not following the correct procedure or a discussion has

gotten off topic, they may make this hand gesture and say out loud “Point of Process.” 
The Stack Keeper allows them to speak before the next person at the top of the stack. They must then

say how they think the discussion has gotten off topic or is not following procedure. 

 Example 1: “I’m not sure why we’re talking about shifts when the agenda says we’re supposed to

be talking about salaries.”

 Example 2: “There’s a proposal on the table, and I think we should resolve that before we move

on to anything else.”

What is the ‘Coaching Stance’ and how does it impact any coaching situation?

The coaching stance is what the Agile Coaching Institute (ACI) refers to as “the heart” of their Agile Coach

Competency Framework.  The coaching stance is supposed to be the place you start from and return to.

The coaching stance elements highlighted are:

 maintaining neutrality – do not judge peoples’ attitudes or actions; question them about the whys and

how they think that they may improve things

 serving the client’s agenda – do not approach a coaching situation with a set of pre-defined directions that

you want the client to follow

 reducing client dependence – introduce thinking and decision techniques that, once used by the client,

they no longer need your services

 not colluding – do not collude with the client to introduce attitudes and practices that would be detrimental

to the organisation even if they believe that that is what they want

 signature presence – bringing your best self to the coaching situation

Which ‘Coaching Techniques’ can I use to help the team be more self-organising?

Self-organising teams is one of the keys to Agile success but experienced developers who are used to working in a

‘command and control’ environment may find it difficult to adopt this Agile practice; they are used to being told

what to do and sometime how to do it.

Instead of asking the Project Manager (PM) what to next, a developer needs to look at the Team Board and choose

what to do next; instead of asking the PM how to do something, he/she should consult their peers on the

development team; if no one knows, that is an impediment and the Team should discuss how to resolve the issue.

The Scrum Master, as the Risks and Issues Manager, can help the team decide how to resolve the problem but

should not be expected to solve it for them.

The main coaching techniques that a Scrum Master can use to help the team become more self-organising are

 Powerful Questions – are used by a coach to extract more details about a problem or situation; making the

inquirers articulate their answer often organises their thoughts so that they start to answer their own

questions.

Powerful Questions are open questions ie they cannot have a yes or no answer; they usually start with ‘who’, ‘why’,

‘what’, ‘when’, ‘how’ or ‘where’; they may also start with statements such as ‘Tell me about …’.

Reflecting a statement back to an individual can help prompt further exploration; for example, “You said you were

worried about the quality of the product so far … tell me more”. 

For more information about Powerful Questions, see Coaching with NLP.

 Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose – One way for a Scrum Master to help with self-organisation is to look

at the Team members’ motivation.  People who rely on outside influences for their motivation, so-called

extrinsic motivation, are far less effective than those that are self-motivating, so-called intrinsic motivation.

To foster the intrinsic motivation, we need to examine the following aspects of individuals and the Team:

 Autonomy – We all have an inner-drive to satisfy our psychological needs; if what we are told what to do

is not satisfying our inner drive, then we become demotivated.

Giving individuals and teams more control of what to do, when and how to do it, motivates them more.

Also, if individual Team members identify with their team (their tribe) the team becomes more autonomous and

self-directing.

 Mastery – Do not expect individuals or Teams to master Scrum straight out of the training course.

Mastery comes from small steps from what they know now to the goal of Mastery; you possibly know of

the problems associated with ‘big-bang’ implementations; the same is true with ‘big-bang’ Mastery.
As a Scrum Master you should discover what the Team members know now and ask them to have a go at

something small but significant in Scrum and give them the space and time to experiment on their own to work out

how to do it.

Most people want to do better; by helping individuals and Teams toward Mastery leads to greater Team self-

organisation.

 Purpose – People and Teams who understand and buy-in to why they are doing their work are much more

motivated than those who come to work just to pay the bills and do not care about the work.

Whenever possible, involve the Team in the early stages of product development; let them hear the discussions

about forming the Product Vision and Objectives; let them have an input to the Product Backlog ordering.

For more about Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose see Drive by David Pink and Intrinsic Motivation by Richard

Ryan and Edward Deci

 Active Listening – To help you gain trust with individuals and Teams, as a Scrum Master you need to use

Active Listening techniques to show that you care, understand and are prepared to help them.  The

following are the techniques that some coaches use; there are others:

Pay Attention

Give the speaker your undivided attention and show that you are hearing the message; your non-verbal
communication, body language, can help the speaker feel comfortable.

 Look directly at the speaker

 Do not be distracted by other thoughts

 Do not mentally prepare a response to one thing the speaker has said; you will not be listening to what

he/she is saying now

 Observe your own and the speaker's body language

  Show That You're Listening

Use your own body language and gestures to show that you are engaged.

 Nod occasionally

 Smile
  Make your posture open and interested

 Encourage the speaker to continue with small verbal comments like yes and OK

 Provide Feedback

Your own assumptions, judgments, and beliefs can ‘distort’ what you hear.  As a listener, your role is to understand

what is being said; this may that you have to ask questions to clarify what is being said.

 Paraphrase what has been said; for example, "What I'm hearing is... " or "Sounds like you are saying... "

 Ask questions to clarify certain points; for example, "What do you mean when you say... " or "Is this what

you mean?"

 Summarize the speaker's comments periodically.

  Defer Judgement

 Interrupting a speaker is a waste of time; it is frustrating for the speaker and reduces understanding of the

message.

 Ask the speaker if he/she has finished a point and if it is OK to ask a question at this time Respond

Appropriately

 Do not ‘attack’ the speaker; show respect and understanding of the speaker’s position. You are gaining
information and perspective. 

 Be candid, open and honest in your response

 Assert your opinions respectfully.

Which ‘Coaching Techniques’ can I use to help the team be more self-organising?

56.
What are the challenges facing self-organising teams and how can I help reduce the impact of these
challenges?
There are many challenges facing self-organising teams which can be grouped into the following categories:

Organisational inertia.  In organisations that have been around for some time, the way that things are done have

become habits; many supervisor and management personnel are reluctant to change from fear of their job changing

significantly or disappearing altogether

Individual Team members’ inertia.  Individual Team members may have fears about:

 having to learn new techniques

 accepting greater responsibility

 learning to cooperate with other team members more

 taking on activities outside of their specialist skills

A Scrum Master must be aware of these potential challenges to self-organisation, look for signs of them and help

both the organisation and Teams to overcome them.

Below are 3 typical challenges faced by teams and the possible help that a Scrum Master can give:

 Bad Forecast:  In the early stages of an Agile transformation, the Teams may be asked to estimate using

Story Points, relative estimating, instead of the conventional task estimates that they have been used to.

This technique requires practice to become proficient and early attempts may result in the forecast at Sprint

Planning for Product Backlog Items (PBI) to be attempted being significantly in error, generally, Teams
tend to under-estimate.  This may demotivate some Team members and make them question the use of the

new technique.

 Solution: During the early Sprints, at the daily Scrums, the Team will realise that their progress toward the

agreed Sprint Goal is slower than they would like.  As a Scrum Master, you should ask the Team if there is

anything they can do to improve progress; some changes could improve progress.  

However, the time to address the underlying problem to do with estimating is during the Sprint Retrospective when

the estimates for each Sprint Plan PBI should be compared to ‘actuals’ to see if there was any common reason for

the estimates being inaccurate or if there were one or two ‘one-off’ estimating mistakes.

If there was a common or systemic reason for inadequate estimates, the Team must re-estimate the Product Backlog

in the light of the new evidence; if the errors were due to ‘one-off’ inaccuracies, the Team should re-estimate

similar User Stories in the Product Backlog.

Emphasise with the Team that nobody is expecting ‘perfection’ straight away; the importance is that they take time

to learn from their experience and apply that learning going forward.

 Technical Debt:  We build products incrementally; ‘only do today what you need to do today’.  It is

probable in later increments that some code that worked for a previous increment no longer works for the

current increment so the code is changed.  Over time a single method in the code may have had several

‘patches’ applied to it so that becomes difficult to read and restructure when further ‘patches are needed;

this may cause de-motivation in some Team Members and even cause arguments between them about the

state of the code.

The programmers aim is for ‘clean’ and simple code but the temptation is to produce something that works now

without considering future maintenance needs.  The fact that the resulting code may not be ‘clean’ and simple is

known as Technical Debt.

 Solution:  Resolving Technical Debt costs time and money; the longer you leave the resolution, the more

time and money it costs to resolve.

There are 3 suggested solutions that a Scrum Master can encourage the Team to adopt to address potential

Technical Debt problems:

 Definition of Done (DoD):  Ask the Team to add an item to the DoD to ensure all new or changed code is

peer reviewed to ensure that the structure is ‘clean’ and any potentially reusable code fragments are

refactored to their own method.

Do not let the Team wait until the end of the Sprint to do the code reviews, have them do it once the programmer

believes that he/she has finished.  In this way, there is the shortest time between ‘finished’ and any refactoring that

may be needed.

 Pair-Programming:  The idea of two programmers working side-by-side to develop one function may

seem counter-intuitive; it would cost twice as much to produce the code.  However, in the medium to long-

term, Technical Debt may be reduced or even eliminated when one programmer is looking on and offering

advice to the programmer at the keyboard.

 Test-Driven Development (TDD): 

With TDD, no line of production code is written before a test has been written to test it, the test is run and is

expected to fail.  Only enough production code is written to pass the test. See Test-Driven Development.
Practicing TDD does require an Integrated Development Environment that supports it and to be successful, all

programmers must have the discipline to use it.

Initially, some programmers may be reluctant to use it because of the perceived extra work; however, when they

see that the maintenance effort is reduced by more than the extra initial work, they come to accept the practice.

Team Member Leaves:  Each Team member has a list of responsibilities and capabilities including their own

specialisation, DoD checking and contributing to work outside of their specialisation.

The Scrum Master should keep a list of all these responsibilities and capabilities so that when a Team member

leaves the Team for some reason, the remaining members can distribute the leavers responsibilities and capabilities

amongst themselves.

If it is not possible for any of the remaining Team members to take on any required responsibility or a required

capability is not available, the Scrum Master must raise this as an issue with the Product Owner and management; a

Team member training may be the resolution to the issue or an additional Team member may be introduced to the

Team.  In the latter case, the Scrum Master should monitor how the ‘new’ Team are managing their self-

organisation.

How can a self-organising team approach challenges that they discover during a Retrospective?

Even good self-organising teams can face challenges with Retrospectives in how they are run and addressing issues
that they discover.

The following are some of the most commonly experienced challenges with their suggested solutions:

 Apathy:  After a while, some Team members may consider that the Retrospective is a waste of time:

 They have already discussed problems that are out of their control to resolve

 They have improved their process as best they can

Solutions:

The Team must devise a plan to attempt to resolve ‘external’ problems probably involving the Scrum Master as the

Risks and Issues Manager

Although there may be parts of their process that are working ‘OK’, the Team should devise experiments to

innovatively change some parts and review the changes at the next Retrospective

 Boring:  If all Retrospectives follow the same ‘sit around a table and discuss’ format, they will quickly

become boring.  

Solution:  The Retrospective facilitator should change the format of the Retrospectives by using ‘games’ to elicit

required information from the group; see Fun Retrospectives and Agile Retrospectives Ideas: Games For Your Next

Retrospective for more ideas than a Retrospective facilitator could possibly use

All Talk, No Action:  During early transformation Retrospectives, the Team are likely to come up with many

impediments; the list may seem daunting and the thought of discussing them all is de-motivating.  Also, although

the impediments may be discussed and understood by all, there is no plan to resolve any of them

Solution: 

Timebox the discovery of impediments.  The Team members will, hopefully, only come up with their most

important impediments

Treat the Impediments or Blocks List like a Product Backlog Before discussing any impediment, get the Team to

order them in terms of Team importance Discuss only the top 2 or 3 impediments and produce plans to try to

resolve them Every 2 or 3 days during the next Sprint, get the Team to state how the plans are going

The first item for the next Retrospective should be to discuss the result of the plans; removing the impediment if it

has been resolved or putting it back onto the Impediments List for consideration with the rest of the un-resolved and

un-discussed impediment

What are the differences between a ‘working group’ and a ‘team’?

Generally:

 Working groups consist of individuals with specialist skills who take their direction of from a supervisor or

manager to produce an output but who do not necessarily interact with each other; ‘traditional’ software

development ‘teams’ follow this model; each team member is a specialist whose work is controlled by the

Project Manager.
  Teams are comprised of people with specialist skills but interact with each other to produce an output;

individuals may work outside of their specialist skills in to produce a ‘team output’

The following table compares how attributes differ between working groups and teams:

Working Groups Teams

Individual accountability Individual and mutual accountability

Come together to share information and perspectives Frequently come together for discussion, decision making,
problem solving, and planning

Focus on individual goals Focus on team goals

Produce individual work products Produce collective work products

Define individual roles, responsibilities, and tasks Define individual roles, responsibilities, and tasks to help team do
its work; often share and rotate them

Concern with one’s own outcome and challenges Concern with outcomes of everyone and challenges the team faces

Purpose, goals, approach to work shaped by manager Purpose, goals, approach to work shaped by team leader with
team members

What are the key attributes of an effective Agile Team?

There are many lists of the key attributes of effective Agile Teams produced; the following list distils and collates

the common themes of most of them:

 Having Ground Rules

Effective Agile Teams set their own Working Agreement, Ground Rules, whereby the members know and buy-into

the Team working practices into which are usually elements to do with all the following attributes.

 Working Together/Collaboration
In a successful agile team, the team members work together on features; UI designers, developers and testers work

together to ensure that they, as a team, have finished a story.

All Team members are aware of their own and colleagues’ strengths and weaknesses so he/she knows who to go to

for improvement advice for themselves and who else he/she can help to improve.  

As the successful agile team collaborates to finish features, they avoid the problem of having many features started

but none getting finished at the end of the Sprint.

 Having Short Feedback Loops

Obtaining feedback at regular, short intervals is a major contributor to the success of an Agile team; they use 1 to 3-

week Sprints so they can produce potentially shippable increments of a product to obtain feedback form the wider

stakeholder community.  During the Sprints, if it is not possible to work with end-users directly, successful teams

will seek feedback at every stage of the development of each Product Backlog Item (PBI).

 Being Adaptable

As in all product development, conditions are not always favourable in an Agile environment:

 The Agile team may not have acceptance criteria for every PBI

 A team room may not be present

 The Team may not be able to remove all obstacles. 

However, the Team must get the work done; Agile team members must be adaptable to any kind of situation (be it

the ideal or the worst situation).

Agile team members must be willing to work outside their specialisations.  This does not mean that they are

expected to work in areas that they know nothing about; they can help other Team members under their

supervision; the simplest form of this is for anybody to run test scripts if they are becoming a bottleneck.

 Intra-Team Communication

Good intra-Team communications is one of the major characteristics of a successful Agile team; Team members:

 challenge each other in a non-aggressive manner

 should not filter their communications ie ‘tell it like it is’

  must be willing to exhibit a sense of vulnerability; a willingness to say “I don’t know.” 

 must have the ability to ask for help promptly when they need it

 Being Committed

Successful Agile teams members are fully ‘bought-in’ the Product Vision and Objectives and are fully committed

to achieving the best value for the business within time and cost constraints. 

They try to find ways to share their knowledge, learn various new things and enhance their own skills. 

Also, all Team members must be able to see where Team members’ workloads stand at all times; if someone is

overloaded, members must be willing to help the over-burdened person so as to smooth workflow across the team;

this would normally happen during the daily Scrum.

Which methods can I apply to help a team improve its performance?

There are several ways to help a Team improve its performance but they can be categorised as follows: 

Ensuring the Team has common goals and purpose:  The performance of a Team that is ‘pulling in different

directions’ will never be optimal; all Team members must know the product development and objectives and fully

buy-in to them; no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’

Ensuring the Team understands and embraces Shared Accountability:  We all understand self-accountability; you
do something wrong and you pay the price.

Team Accountability or Shared Accountability is taking responsibility for others ie Team members must be aware

of the work that others are doing and be prepared to challenge their work for the good of the Team

Having a Working Agreement:  A Team Working Agreement states the ‘rules’ that the Team will follow to produce

a valuable product; is something that the Team members discuss and agree; nobody ‘issues’ a Team Working

Agreement to the Team.

The Agreement can contain anything that the Team would feel useful to enhance collaboration ie:

 Dates, times and places for the Sprint ceremonies

 How the Sprint ceremonies will be run

  Pair-programming arrangements

 How the ‘Definition of Done’ will be implemented

 Ensuring Psychological Safety:  Psychological safety is the belief that the individuals within the Team are

safe for interpersonal risk taking ie a Team member must be able to be themselves and speak their mind

without fear of negative consequences to their self-image, status or career.

 Adhering to the Scrum value of Respect produces Psychological Safety.

What is an ‘homogenous team’ and what are the pitfalls of having one?

A homogenous team is one where the members are all similar in background, gender, age and culture; we are not

talking about similar skill-sets but general life experience.

Homogenous teams have been shown to suffer from the following drawbacks:

 Stifling of creativity – homogeneous team members have a similar world view and so find it difficult to

‘think out of the box’

 Communication – Although homogeneous team members may think they understand what is meant by a

colleague’s jargon, they may have misinterpreted which may lead to mistakes; in Teams with members

from diverse backgrounds it is more likely that such jargon will be challenged and a greater understanding

is obtained by all Team members

 Minorities – People not of the same background as the homogeneous Team members may have feelings of

exclusion and/or discrimination.

What is a multi-staged model for team formation and development?

All multi-staged models for team formation recognise different stages that a group of people go through from the

start, getting together, to becoming a high-performing team.

There are several published models from those that involve rigorous mathematical steps to analyse team needs and

individual attributes, such as that proposed in Two Multi-Objective Stochastic

 Stage Key Elements of the Development Stage

Forming  Orientation to task and team

 Ground rules identified

 Reliant on leader

Storming
 Strong emotional responses to team and task

 Uncertainty, anxiety, and resistance

 Internal friction, conflict, crisis often are the result

Norming
 Open exchange of information, emotional support, team cohesions

 Interpersonal team structures created

 Development of group norms

Performing
 Team becomes a “working organization”

 Capacity to problem solve and adapt to achieve tasks at hand

Outperforming
 Team exceeds the performance norms

 Team able to function and successfully perform in the larger system

 Sustainment of tasks are achieved

Adjourning
 Change is embedded into the organization

 Project team disbands

What is the ‘Definition of Done’ and how do I help to create one?

The ‘Definition of Done’ (DoD) is a checklist of all the activities that must be completed for a Product Backlog

Item (PBI) before it can be considered ‘Done’ and is fit for review by the wider stakeholder community and

potentially released to the live environment; the DoD is a key artefact for Product Development quality control.

The DoD is assembled and agreed by the Product Owner (PO) and the Development Team members.

Potential Problems with initial DoD

There is a possibility that the Team develop a minimalist DoD and submit it to the PO for approval; some PO will

give it a cursory glance and approve it.

In such situations, as a Scrum Master, you should remind the PO that he/she is solely responsible for the value to be

accrued from the Product Development and that he/she needs to understand each DoD element in case any have

been forgotten or any are unnecessary; the best way to achieve this is for you to facilitate a DoD workshop with the

PO and Development Team members.

Another problem with minimalist DoD is that they assume that small but significant steps in the development

process will be done because ‘they are obvious’; they may be obvious in the ‘cold light of day’ but not so obvious

in the ‘heat of development’; as a Scrum Master, you should encourage the rest of the Scrum Team to include more

detail in the DoD than seems necessary; items can always be taken out if they are felt to be redundant.

DoD Examples

The DoD for software development may include items such as:

 Detailed requirements analysis done with appropriate business people

 UI and User Experience approved by the appropriate business person

 The system architecture conforms to organisational system constraints

 All code adheres to the coding standards 

 All PBI functionality has been Unit Tested and passed

 Full Regression Testing has been completed and passed

 User Acceptance Testing has been completed and passed

 All necessary documentation has been completed

  An actual DoD would probably add more detail to some of the elements.

The DoD for a PBI is usually peer-reviewed by another Team member that has not had significant input to the PBI

development.

Given that Scrum is not just for software development, a DoD for a non-software product development, such as

running an event, may look something like this for the PBI of ‘As the Invitations Coordinator, I need to send

invitations to the event, so that we maximise attendance’:

 The list of invitees has been collated from the {xyz} customer list

 The list of invitees has been approved by the event Project Manager

 The form of the invitation has been designed by the Marketing Dept

 The form of the invitation has been approved by the Marketing Director

 Invitee addresses have been updated

Once all the DoD items have passed their checks, the Invitations Coordinator is authorised to send out the

invitations.

What are the ‘Agile’ technical practices?

The ‘Agile Technical Practices’ or ‘Agile Programming Practices’ all come from work carried out or developed
from other ideas by eXtreme Programming practitioners;  They are not part of Scrum or any other Agile framework

but have been adopted by many, if not most, Agile programmers as a ‘toolkit’ of ‘best practice’ for producing

minimal, ‘clean’ and maintainable code.  The list of practices, with explanations, is as follows:

 A common "war-room" style work area – Where Team members are co-located, they should occupy an

area that they can call their own.  

There will be many artefacts that are best displayed on a wall and it is best to keep them in one place.Also, the

Team members can obtain ‘osmotic communication’ just by being in the same area as others having conversations.

 Sharing the codebase between all or most programmers – Individual programmers do not ‘own’ their

own code; it is a shared resource between all programmers.  

Because nothing is considered ‘finished’ the first time through (it may meet the Definition of Done for the current

Sprint but may have to be modified for other functionality in a later Sprint), other programmers need access to all

the code in order to update it when necessary; if they do not have access, they may write redundant code. 

 A single coding standard to which all programmers adhere – Just as sharing the codebase is an

important practice, having a common coding standard reduces the time that a programmer needs to

understand code that another has originally written.

 Pair-programming – The simplest practice to implement, it requires that no line of code, production or

test, is written without 2 people being involved; one typing at the keyboard, the other reviewing what is

being done and suggesting alternatives.  

Contrary to some beliefs, this practice does not double the cost of development because the resulting code will be

virtually bug-free thus reducing rework time considerably

 Simple Design – most things are simple when they start out but become more complex as time goes on.

The codebase must be inspected regularly for signs of complexity and the code refactored to produce

small, simple functions and methods.  

 Test-Driven Development (TDD) – This practice requires that no line of production code is written unless

an ‘automated’ test has been written for the functionality, the test has been run and fails and only enough

production code is written so that the test passes.

The practice does require the use of an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that supports TDD or access to
a TDD framework that supports the programming language being used.

 Rigorous, regular refactoring – As stated in most of the practices above no line of code can be

considered ‘finished’ until the end of the Product Development.  Even during a Product maintenance

phase, the code may need to be modified. If ‘patches’ are added just to make the code work, the codebase

will become complex and difficult to modify and maintain.

 Continuous integration – Even code that works in the IDE and passes all tests, it may fail in the system

build; the longer you leave it between system builds (integration), the harder it is to track down what

caused the build to fail.

Integration system builds should be done as often as practicable to catch errors early and make them easier to find

and fix.
Some organisations do a full build of source code that has been checked-in to the source code repository every 2

hours; some organisations do a full build each time code is checked-in to the source code repository.

This practice does require the use of automated system build systems.

How can I help the Product Owner create the Product Vision with the Development Team?

Definition:

Firstly, we must define what the Product Vision is.  Just as any Vision, the Product Vision should be a short

statement of what the product is for.  Here are some characteristics of a good Product Vision:

 One sentence

 Emotive and inspirational – a ‘call to the flag’

 Colourful with a logo – for Product Visions that are up on the wall

 Written in the present tense – imagine that the product already exists

 What does the product do – not how it was created or how it works

Roman Pichler, the acknowledged father of Visions, says that Product Visions should be:

 Clear & stable: Every participant should find it easy to understand, so avoid empty phrases that don’t say
anything (aka bullshit)

 Broad & engaging: It should depict a higher picture that everyone can relate to and that inspires people to

give their best to make it happen

 Short & sweet: It needs get straight to the point.

Additionally, make it:

 Achievable: Although a vision should be a futuristic idea of what the product might become, set a goal that

can be met

 Insightful: Craft the idea based on users’ needs and motives and define the main reason behind the

product’s existence.

Examples
Before investigating how to help the Product Owner create the Product Vision with the Development Team, let us

look at a couple of examples:

Tesla:

 “Build sports car

 Use that money to build an affordable car

 Use that money to build an even more affordable car

 While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options

 Don't tell anyone”

Whilst this Vision ‘breaks’ the one sentence guideline, it does fit Roman Pilcher’s advice.

Ikea:

“At IKEA our vision is to create a better everyday life for the many people”

This is a short and broad Vision for the company that will drive the products that the company produces ie will a

proposed product help ‘create a better everyday life for the many people’.

 Product Vision Creation

So how does the Product Owner, who is responsible for the Product Vision, go about creating the Product Vision?

Firstly, the creation of a Product Vision is best done collaboratively; as a Scrum Master, arrange a facilitated

workshop with the Product Owner, relevant stakeholders and the Development Team to ‘brainstorm’ ideas; you

may facilitate the workshop yourself (see Creating A Shared Vision That Works).

There are 2 widely used ‘models’ to use to help create a Product Vision:

1. ‘The Elevator Pitch’

2. Bill Shackelford’s ‘Design the box’

 The Elevator Pitch

The idea behind the Elevator Pitch is to put together a statement about something to ‘pitch’ to the CEO when riding

in an elevator; we are not going to do this; it is the elements of an Elevator Pitch that we need to explore for the
product so that we can come to a suitable form of words for the Product Vision.  There are different lists of Elevator

Pitch elements; for now, we will look at the following list from Roman Pichler:

 The Target Group – who the product is likely to benefit

 The Needs – the main problem the product addresses or the primary benefit it offers

 The Product – summarises the three to five features of the product that make it stand out and that are

critical for its success

 The Business Goals – explains why it’s worthwhile for your company to invest in the product. It states the

desired business benefits, for instance, increase revenue, enter a new market, reduce cost, develop the

brand, or acquire valuable knowledge. 

By ‘brainstorming’ the above elements, the workshop participants get a better understanding of the product and can

converge onto a suitable Product Vision.

Roman Pichler has a downloadable Product Vision Board that you can use to organise the ‘brainstorming’ ‘sticky

notes’ and capture the decisions:

 Design the Box

In a facilitated workshop, the participants imagine the product to be a ‘shrink-wrapped’ physical box containing the

product; or it may be that the product is to be ‘shrink-wrapped’.

The elements of the box are:

 The Front – The product name, main features and a graphic

  The Back – Product information

 The Sides – Limitations, Health & Safety, Legal

There is a good description of how to run a Design the Box workshop at Design the Box.

Again, as with the Elevator Pitch, the workshop participants get a better understanding of the product and can

converge onto a suitable Product Vision

How can the Product Owner and Development Team move from the Product Vision to the Product Backlog?

It is not advisable to go straight from the Product Vision to collecting requirements for the Product Backlog.

The Product Owner (PO) is solely responsible for the value produced by a Product Development and to have some

understanding of this value the Product Objectives, Benefits and an initial Business Case should be investigated to

check that, in all probability, the product will produce value for the company; it is no good having a great product if

no one will buy it and/or it will take 5 years to recoup the development costs.

To help the Product Owner and Development Team move from the Product Vision to the Product Backlog, as a

Scrum Master, you can arrange a series of facilitated workshops to determine the Product Objectives, Business

Case and Backlog.

Product Objectives

The Product Objectives are a list of things that enable the meeting of the Product Vision. It should not be a long list;

between 5 and 10 is usual; Objectives are not requirements.

Some examples:

 “MVP to be released for the Christmas Market”

  “Reduce report creation time by a minimum of 50%”

 “Increase re-registrations by 50% in 1 year”

Although a Product Vision may state some development attributes that can be measured, most do not; it is the

Objectives that should be measurable.  Some people use S.M.A.R.T Objectives.

The Objectives list may also be ordered by business value and may define what is to be included in a Minimum

Viable Product (MVP).

Benefits

From the Objectives list, we can now make an estimate of the expected benefits that we expect the product to give

to the ‘customer’ (internal and/or external) and the company; each Objective may contribute to more than one

category of Benefit; for example, an Objective of “Reduce report creation time by a minimum of 50%” may have

the following Benefits:

 Allow Marketing Dept to make faster pivot decisions:

 Less rework: expected savings = 20% of marketing costs

 More timely information

 Reduced customer frustration: increased customer re-registrations revenue = 50% 

 Reduced staff frustration: reduced staff turnover and recruiting/training costs = 20%

Although we have used percentage values in the examples above, it is recommended that actual monetary values

are used.

 Business Case

Now that we have the expected Benefits from developing the product, we must now estimate how much it might

cost to develop.

At this point, the Development Team may not have been chosen:

 We may outsource the development

 We may not have chosen the technology to be used

 The potential Team may be busy finishing another product development

To help the PO create an initial Business Case, as the Scrum Master, arrange a facilitated workshop to include the

PO, relevant stakeholders and senior ‘technical’ personnel to investigate the probable costs of:

 Configuring something that already exists

 Developing the product in-house

 Different implementation technologies

 Hiring contracting staff to cover skill shortfalls

 Outsourcing part or all the development

 Doing nothing: Although the immediate cost of doing nothing is zero, doing nothing now may have

significant costs in other areas of the business

From these investigations, the workshop participants must decide as to which option will give, potentially, the best

value.

The costs of the potential solution option must be compared with the expected benefits to make a cost-benefit

decision as to whether the proposed product development is worthwhile.

See the APM website and other websites for more detailed information and ideas.

 Product Backlog

Once the Business Case has been approved, the PO can turn his/her attention to creating the Product Backlog.

As the Scrum Master, organise a facilitated workshop to include the PO, relevant stakeholders and the Delivery

Team to discover the Product Backlog Items (PBI), usually User Stories, that will fulfil the Product Objectives.

These PBI will be estimated by the Development Team and the results fed back into the Business Case to ensure

that the cost-benefit analysis still indicates a viable development.

What may be the benefits of having the Product Owner included in Retrospectives?

The Sprint Retrospective is a key ceremony for ‘Inspect and Adapt’ to aid Continuous Improvement.

Many organisations have only the Development Team, facilitated by the Scrum Master, to reflect on their past

process performance and make plans to improve it.

However, The Product Owner (PO) is also a member of the Scrum Team and there are advantages to having the PO

included in the participants of the Retrospective:

 Strengthen the relationship with the Development Team and improve collaboration with them:

 Enough time with the development team?

 Available to answer questions or provide feedback quickly enough? 

 Right level of feedback and guidance in the right way?

 Is communication between the Development team and the PO open, honest, and trustful?

 Understand why the Development Team requires some time in the next Sprint to carry out improvements

such as refactoring or investigating a new test tool

 Improve the PO’s own work:

o Understanding why some PBI were not completed

 Too big

 Insufficient Acceptance Criteria

 Does the team know how the users employ the product?

 Are the team members happy with:

o Their involvement in analysing user feedback and data

o Changing the product backlog

o Getting stories ready for the sprint? 

 Do you get enough support from the team to “refine” the backlog?

 Are the team members aware of the big picture:

o The overall vision

o The product strategy

o The product roadmap? 

  Does the PO get enough of the Development Team members’ time to help with product planning and

product road mapping?

If the Development Team have ‘a problem’ with the PO, it is tempting for them not to invite the PO to

Retrospectives but this ‘problem’ is an issue and as a Scrum Master it is part of your responsibility to help resolve

issues; the Retrospective is the best mechanism to discuss and resolve problems between the Development Team

and the PO.

Which techniques can be used during a Backlog Refinement session to create Sprint ready Product Backlog
Items?

The Product Owner (PO) is responsible for all of the Product Backlog Items (PBI):

 The wording of the PBI

 Each ordering of PBI’s business value

 Each PBI’s Acceptance Criteria

The Development Team are responsible for estimating the size and complexity of each PBI; this will be done

initially just before development work begins.

During the development Sprint Planning, the Team must select the next highest value PBI to be attempted during

the Sprint.

However, as time goes on, the PO and Development Team need to apply any lessons learned from development so

far to ensure that the candidate PBI are sufficiently well described and sized (but see Scrum.org Myth 14); this

‘confirmation’ is done during Backlog Refinement during which the following questions are answered:

 Is the wording of the PBI sufficient for the Development Team to understand what is required?

 Has anything occurred to warrant any changes to the PBI wording?

 Are the Acceptance Criteria for each PBI complete and understandable to the Development Team?

 Is the initial size and complexity estimate for each PBI still valid?

 Are all the candidate PBI sized adequately? – A PBI that cannot be completed in 1 Sprint is too big and

must be decomposed
  Is the Product Backlog ordering still correct?

All of these criteria and others to suit a specific situation can be documented as a ‘Definition of Ready’ checklist.

There are a series of blogs that make interesting background reading: Product Backlog Refinement explained.  See

also Grooming the Product Backlog

Techniques

 Run the Backlog Refining session as a facilitated workshop, timeboxed to 2 to 3 hours or 10% of the

Development Team capacity for a 2-week upcoming Sprint (see Product Backlog Refinement: Make the

Most of It) 

 Anybody presents feedback from released increments

 Ask the PO what the next Sprint Goal will be

 ‘Modified’ Planning Poker: 

 Each Development Team Member has ‘YES’ and ‘NO’ cards

 Show an element of a PBI and ask participants to select a card

 All participants show their cards at the same time

 Ask each ‘NO’ what information they need or have

 PBI wording – use ‘modified’ Planning Poker technique with 

 Acceptance Criteria – use ‘modified’ Planning Poker technique with Development Team members and

PO

 Sizing – use ‘modified’ Planning Poker technique with Development Team members (see also Resizing a

Backlog, Story Splitting Cheat Sheet and Elephant Carpaccio Exercise)

 Ordering:

 Ask PO if there are any business value changes that require the Product Backlog to be reordered

 Ask the Development Team members if any PBI changes introduce new dependencies
  Spikes – if the Development Team do not fully understand a PBI or unsure how it might be developed,

they can choose to introduce a ‘Spike’ item to the next Sprint Backlog to do some research into the

problem

 Behaviour Driven Development (BDD):

Also known as Specification by Example (SbE)

 An extension of Test Driven Development that requires the use of specialised development tools

 Uses structured language to automate production of some development artifacts

Although using BDD requires a toolset that might not be available, you can use the structured language to create

PBI Acceptance Criteria:

 Given {some context}

 When {some action is carried out}

 Then {a particular set of observable consequences should happen}

An example:

 Given my bank account is in credit, and I made no withdrawals recently,

 When I attempt to withdraw an amount less than my card's limit,

 Then the withdrawal should complete without errors or warnings.

For many years, business stakeholders have seen or been involved with building products using the so-

called ‘waterfall’ model; business stakeholders are intensely involved at the beginning of the

development to specify the detailed requirements and do not get involved again until just before

deployment to do User Acceptance Testing (UAT).

People get used to a way of working even if they experience problems with it; it is human nature to ‘get

on with it’ and/or develop personal ways of mitigating the problems that they experience.

Many business stakeholders are sceptical about ‘wholesale’ changes to the way that they are being

asked to work especially as, superficially, their involvement with the product development is significantly

increased.
Also, many senior business managers are risk averse and require predictability from the product

development process.

The reasons why the waterfall development model evolved are beyond the scope of this question; to

explain Agile to a business stakeholder, you need to know the major elements of the waterfall model that

can cause ‘problems’ for the business:

 Gathering detailed requirements takes a significant amount of time where money is being spent

for no additional income

 Detailed requirements change over time:

 If there is little or no business involvement during development, capturing required changes is

difficult

 If the changes are not implemented, the business get the ‘wrong’ product

 If the changes are implemented, it leads to extra cost and delays in deployment

 The project plan, created just after requirements gathering, is based on estimates but is taken as

a quote by many which leads to ‘recriminations’ if the development costs more and/or takes

longer

Each business stakeholder will have had frustrations based on one or more of potential waterfall

problems; before trying to explain the whole of Agile, it is recommended to start by discovering which

areas of the waterfall development process is causing the frustrations and explaining the aspects of Agile

that will help overcome them.

One model of product development to base your explanations around is ‘The Iron Triangle’ 
Waterfall sets out to define all the detailed requirements and plan how they will be implemented; the

resulting ‘contract’ assumes that features, time and cost are all fixed.

However, as already said, it can take a long time to capture the detailed requirements and plan their

implementation; however, things never go according to plan (requirement changes, staff changes) and

so, when trying to implement a ‘fixed’ requirements list, the result will probably be time and cost

overruns.

An Agile product development approach turns the ‘iron triangle’ upside-down:

You can see from Figure 4 that with an Agile product development process:

 The business fixes the time for the product development; this time is based on business

imperatives such as market or legislation imperatives

 The development costs, which are mainly made up of developer costs, are fixed by having a

fixed, cross-functional team

 What is delivered in terms of the requirements is variable

The requirements variability is based on ‘high-level’ requirements and needs some rules to give the
business some confidence; the main rule is the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

One of the major advantages of an Agile product development process over a waterfall one is that the

product is delivered incrementally allowing some return on investment before the product is ‘completed’.

Incremental delivery can also help with experimentation when the product details are unclear; parts of

the potential final product can be deployed early to get ‘customer’ feedback that will help produce a

better product.

One of the important factors when explaining Agile to a business stakeholder is to make sure that they

understand the major differences in output that they can expect compared with waterfall and the

differences expected of them:

 Documentation will be minimal focusing on what is needed not what might be needed
  Probable participation throughout the development for discovering detailed requirements,

planning and reviewing

Another approach to answering this question can be found at How to Explain Agile to Your Stakeholders.

What are the typical organizational impediments that Scrum Teams face and how can they be addressed?

There are many opinions as to what the ‘typical’ impediments that Scrum Teams face are; the following list is not

exhaustive but covers the impediments that Scrum Teams may probably face:

 Old Habits – During the early stages of an Agile Transformation, when many parts of the organisation are

not conversant with the implications of Agile, some business and technical managers expect the Scrum

Team to deliver documentation and reports that they are used to.  This can be either impossible or time-

wasting.

Also, when Development Team Members, new to Scrum, are under ‘pressure’, it is natural for them to revert to old

work practices because they know them and having to think about and use the new work practices takes more time

and increases the pressure.

Solution:

During the early stages of an Agile Transformation, the role of a Scrum Master as the Risks and Issues Manager, is
key.

During the daily Scrum, he/she must listen to what the Development Team members have been working on and

what they plan to be working on; note any item that does not seem to be adding to achievement of the Sprint Goal

and discuss with the relevant developer after the Scrum has finished.  If the item is a ‘hang-over’ from the old ways

of working, the Scrum Master must identify the person who asked for the item and engage them in a ‘Scrum

Mentoring’ session to explain why their request is inappropriate.

Similarly, the Scrum Master should question any developer that does not seem to be following the Agile and Scrum

practices; for example, the developer may be building the user interface for a User Story from his/her own

knowledge, because it is quicker, without collaborating with a relevant business person to get the correct

information.
  Distractions – 

In organisations that are used to using Matrix Management for resource allocation, it is usual for one person to be

working on multiple product developments or other work.  This causes the individual to become distracted from the

necessary work for any one of their assignments which results in reduced quality of their work and more time

overall to complete the work.

Solution:

Scrum requires that the Development Team is made up of all the skills necessary for the development and that the

relevant resources are dedicated to the product development.

The Scrum Master must work with the matrix managers to assign resources to one product development at a time

for the long-term and not assign people based on short-term expediency.

There may be occasions when a particular Development Team member is considered to be the only person who can

solve a problem outside of their immediate product development responsibilities; as long as this is to be a short-

term (1 to 3 days) commitment, it is allowable but their reduced development capacity must be reflected in the

Team’s expected velocity.  If this situation is a common occurrence, it is a significant impediment to the Team’s

progress and the Scrum Master must escalate the impediment to the Product Owner.

 Lack of cross functional teams – In the waterfall model of product development, the ‘team’ is not

constant throughout the development:

The team member skills are different for each ‘phase’ of the waterfall development process, whereas with Scrum

we require all necessary skills to be available at all times throughout the development:
Solution:

As in Distractions above, the Scrum Master must work with the organisation resource allocators to ensure that

Scrum Development Teams are composed of members with all the necessary skills for the development all of the

time.

 Old HR Systems – The traditional HR system for compensating employees is based on the individual;

their skills, their seniority, their responsibilities.  This is particularly true of ‘Performance Related Pay’; it

is a competitive system.

We expect Scrum Development Teams to be self-organising, cross-functional and work in a collaborative manner;

traditional HR systems are an impediment to this goal.

Solution:

The Scrum Master must work with the HR department to make them more Agile.  There is a good article from the

Agile Alliance, Practicing Agility in Human Resources, to help with this HR coaching.

 ScrumBut – 

The ‘mechanics’ of Scrum are relatively easy to implement but it is implementing the Agile values from the Agile

Manifesto, the Agile Principles and the Scrum values from the Scrum Guide that make Scrum work; these values

are principles are the hardest part of Scrum to implement because they require an organisational culture change.
Many organisations implement the Scrum ‘mechanics’ and ignore the values and principles and then wonder why

this ‘Agile thing’ is not working.

Solution:

It is not possible to change an organisations whole culture overnight!

It is recommended that the Scrum Master, during the early stages of an organisational transformation, focus their

‘culture changing’ efforts on the stakeholders directly involved with a single product development.

Some may be sceptical so the Scrum Master may have to spend a significant amount of mentoring time with them.

Even though the Scrum Master may explain the implications of Scrum to sceptical stakeholders (and developers in

some cases), some people do not believe until they see the results.  Be prepared to answer all the sceptical people’s

questions but do not let them introduce non-Agile practices.

  Late Attendance in Meetings – 

In ‘traditional’ organisations where there are many meetings, many required meeting attendees get bored and turn

up late because they know that the early Agenda items probably have nothing to do with them.

Solution:

 Do not hold meetings!

 Do not have Agendas!

When more than two people are required to discuss a topic or make decisions, hold a facilitated workshop.

Although some say that a facilitated workshop should have an Agenda, the word ‘Agenda’ still indicates to some

that a facilitated workshop is just another name for a meeting.  Instead, have clear workshop objectives which are

tightly focused around a single topic so that all workshop invitees are motivated to attend on time.

For those people who still consistently turn up late, the Scrum Master must individually mentor the person as to

why it is important for them to be on time:

 They may miss something of importance to themselves.

 They may miss something that their input to the discussion would be vital

 Asking to recap what has been discussed in their absence wastes other peoples’ time

 Blocked Work – The development Team will rely on people who are non-team members for information
or reviewing of work before they can move on.  Sometimes these people consider their primary

responsibilities to be more important than their product development contribution or their supervisors do

not allow them the necessary time.

 This results in ‘blocked work’ and will probably be ‘reported’ during the daily Scrum.

Solution:

The Scrum Master, as the Risks and Issues manager, must work with the affected developer to resolve the problem

and if the resolution is not successful, he/she must escalate the problem to the Product Owner (PO) who may have

to use their seniority and company politics to resolve the problem themselves.

Remember that the PO is solely responsible for ensuring the best business value emanates from the product

development; blocked work reduces business value.

  Supplier Issues – Similar to Blocked Work above, the Development Team may have to rely on parts of the

product development solution that they have to integrate with being supplied by other teams; these teams

may be internal or external to the organisation.

 The suppliers may or may not be using Agile or specifically Scrum for their development work.

 The other teams may deliver their parts late with respect to the plans or the delivered part may not be of

suitable quality.

Solution:

The process for dealing with Supplier Issues will probably be different between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ suppliers.

 For ‘internal’ suppliers, the first action would be for the Scrum Master to discuss the problem the Project

Manager or Scrum Master of the ‘internal’ team

 For ‘external’ suppliers, the first action would be for the Scrum Master to approach that part of the

organisation that let the contract to discover the dispute process and to follow that 

In both cases, if resolution is not possible and given that there is Programme Management in place, the Scrum

Master should escalate the problem to the PO and facilitate the problem resolution with the Programme

Management.

What are the techniques to analyse impediments in depth?

It is often tempting to see the immediate symptoms of a problem and fix things so that these symptoms disappear

only to see different symptoms appear later for a related problem.

To successfully solve problems, we must get to the root cause of the problem; so-called Root Cause Analysis

(RCA).

The following are popular techniques used to carry out RCA:

 Brainstorming

Brainstorming the RCA relies on several people producing their thoughts and feeding off other people’s thoughts in

order to converge on the probable root cause of the problem.

It is a relatively unstructured technique for RCA and it can be difficult to see the root cause amongst a great deal of

data.

 The 5 Whys

The 5-Whys technique is possibly the simplest RCA technique; it is a little like an annoying 5-year old asking

question after question to the answers you give them.  Essentially, the RCA workshop facilitator keeps asking

“why” until an apparent problem root cause is discovered.

Generally, a minimum of 5 ‘Why?’ questions are asked, although sometimes more or less may be needed.  For

example:

 Problem - the vehicle will not start

o Why? - The battery is dead

o Why? - The alternator is not functioning

o Why? -  The alternator belt has broken

o Why? -  The alternator belt was well beyond its useful service life and not replaced

o Why? - The vehicle was not maintained according to the recommended service schedule

This example could be extended to discover why the vehicle had not been maintained properly; the root cause could

be that the need for regular servicing was unknown; the questions go on until the group agree that a fixable cause
has been found.

 Flowcharting

Flowcharting can help discover problems about a process in a graphical manner; a group of people affected by the

problem will chart the supposed ‘As-Is’ process to see where the problem has arisen:

 Someone does not know that they have responsibilities in the process

 A vital step in the process has been left out or is not being ‘run’

 A step in the process is producing incorrect output

 Fishbone Diagrams
A Fishbone or Ishikawa Diagram is most useful when the “5 Whys” technique is considered to be too basic. In a

Fishbone Diagram, the various causes are grouped into categories, with arrows in the image indicating how the

causes flow toward the problem; categories used in the diagram are not pre-defined but common categories include

equipment, processes or methods, measurements, materials, environment and people.

This type of RCA seeks to understand the possible causes by asking questions such as “what actually happened,”

“when,” “where,” “why,” “how,” and “so what” until a possible cause is identified and the consequences and

significance is investigated further for each category; for example:

 Affinity diagrams

An Affinity Diagram is a tool that gathers large amounts of language data (ideas, opinions, issues) and organizes

them into groupings based on their natural relationships.  The Affinity process is often used to group ideas

generated by Brainstorming.

See Affinity Diagram for more information

When might Scaling Scrum not be a good idea?

The senior management of some (if not many) large organisations, having accepted the ideas behind Agile and

knowing that the one-team Scrum framework is inadequate for their organisation, try to go straight from a

traditional organisation to a ‘Scaled Scrum’ organisation.

Those that have tried this have hit severe cultural problems and perceive that ‘Agile does not do what it says on the

tin’.

Implementing the cultural changes required for single-Team Scrum is difficult enough; the problems with trying to

implement the cultural changes required for ‘Scaled Scrum” are exponentially more difficult.

The following is advice about when not to scale Scrum:

 Don’t try to scale when you are first starting out –  

When beginning the agile journey, it’s critical that you start small and master the basics. Introducing a large

enterprise framework with multiple dependencies presents a steep change curve and typically requires extensive

investment. 

In the early stages, you will reap greater benefits if you focus on developing the core agile principles and Scrum

Values

Work on developing a good backlog, meeting commitments, reaching a standard velocity, and achieving high-

quality output. 

Additionally, starting small creates excitement, focuses on quick wins and learning more nimbly. 

 Don’t start before you have nailed the basics –  

You may have reached the stage where you have multiple Scrum teams, that are working well in a Scrum

environment and have started introducing larger epics that could benefit from being split across multiple teams.

This may seem like a natural point in the journey where you may start to ask whether you are ready to scale. 

Before taking that leap, it is strongly recommended to optimise your current Scrum teams and Agile processes;

really concentrate on strengthening your base in order to maximize throughput and ROI—instead of trying to build

the product-development processes that you will need for Scrum at scale. 

If you are at this point in your Agile journey, take a look at implementing test-driven development, continuous

integration and deployment (not included in the Scrum Guide) and meeting commitments on a regular cadence. 

 Don’t do it just to do it – 
Scaling Scrum has become incredibly popular in many industries; SAFe is a buzzword in the agile community;

companies that are truly ready for enterprise frameworks are getting major rewards from them but that by itself is

not a sufficiently good reason to move to an enterprise framework. 

The transition from team-level Scrum processes to an enterprise framework requires a significant investment in

change management. The move should be well thought-out and cautiously approached. If you have specific

problems that scaling can solve, lay them out with an advisor and see if the journey is worth the investment. 

When you’re ready, know that enterprise frameworks are tried and true tools that have delivered tremendous

benefits for many organizations but you have to be at the right point in your journey to take advantage of these

tools.

How can inter-team dependencies be handled when Scaling Scrum?

 When a product is being developed by multiple Scrum Teams it is recommended that there be 1 Product Backlog

(PB) for that all the Teams draw from to produce their own Sprint Backlogs.

It is probable that 1 Team may be dependent on an output from another Team before they can develop a particular

Product Backlog Item (PBI); for example:

 Suppose that part of the product being developed requires a customer to pay for goods/services; we may

have a User Story as a PBI something like this:

“As a customer

I need to pay for my goods/services

So that the company will send them to me”

 At some point in the development it is realised that there are so many ways to pay (credit card, debit card,

PayPal, WorldPay etc) that the User Story could not be completed by 1 Team in 1 Sprint; ie it is an Epic

 It is decided to split the User Story above into 1 User Story for each payment method

 It is decided that the MVP for the next release includes paying by credit card and paying by PayPal
  It is further decided that Team A will develop all the common elements of payment as part of developing

the ‘Pay by Credit Card’ functionality and Team B will develop the ‘Pay by PayPal’ functionality, which

will use some or all of the common payment elements

Clearly, Team B has a dependency on Team A such that Team B cannot start their part of the payment functionality

until Team A has completed their part.

When Scaling Scrum, the aim of Release Planning is to minimise the inter-team dependencies; it is improbable that

all inter-team dependencies can be eliminated.

The following are some of the ways that inter-team dependencies could be handled:

 User Story Mapping and Minimal Marketable Features (MMF)

MMF is the group of features that make up the MVP.

The Release Plan may be developed using the following steps:

 Ensure that all candidate features and User Stories/Epics are decomposed to manageable sized User Stories

 Assign User Stories to the MVP

 Assign User Stories to potential Team Sprint Backlogs keeping in mind any dependencies 

 Highlight dependencies

For the payment example above, you may end up with a Release Plan Board and proposed Team Sprint plans that

looks something like:

 Possible Release and Sprints Plans

You can see that all Release MMF are planned to be finished by the end of Sprint 2 leaving Sprint 3 to cater for any

overruns.

 Team Structuring

With the advent of Component-Based Development (CBD), some organised their development teams into

Component Teams and Product Teams who ‘glued’ together the necessary components.

If this continued into an Agile environment, then each ‘product’ development team would be dependent on separate

component teams and the required coordination would be an onerous task.

In an Agile environment it is recommended to have ‘Feature Teams’; 1 Team should be responsible for the end-to-

end development of all of a Feature’s User Stories.  

This does not preclude the reuse of components; part of the organisation’s Design Strategy would require that a

separate (possibly non-Agile) Component Management Team (CMT) reviews the output of the Development

Teams to see if there is any functionality that could be componentised; the CMT are responsible for

componentising the functionality and maintaining a Component Library.

Before writing any code, the Development Team search the Component Library for any components that would be

useful.

Component Teams

Feature Teams

 Scrum of Scrum Workshops

Scrum of Scrum meetings are conducted at regular intervals, probably at least once per week, to track dependencies

among scrum teams.

 Use Kanban/Scrum Boards to Visualize Dependencies

Dependency threads or tags may be used for visualization of dependencies among features and/or teams.

 Use a Central Dependency Team for Large Enterprise Programs

As part of Agile programme management, “independent” dependency teams may be used to track inter-team

dependencies, blockers, external dependencies and ensure they are taken to closure.

What formats can be used to scale Scrum Events?

When scaling Scrum, many of the Scrum Events/Ceremonies need to be run with all programme Teams and,

sometimes, all product stakeholders present.

This obviously requires a larger than normal space but the format used is important as well to maximise the value

of the ‘workshops’; for example, for a Sprint Review where several Teams are ‘show-casing’ what they have

produced, it would be boring for the stakeholders just to sit through multiple presentations and demonstrations

especially if there are features being reviewed that they have no immediate interest in.

Scaled Scrum Events/Ceremonies are best run if everyone is co-located or can travel to the Event.  This is not

always possible or economical for organisations that have programme Development Teams and stakeholders

scattered around the world.

 Overall Programme Scrum Event Process

The overall Programme Scrum Event process is similar for both non-co-located and co-located Events:

1. All participants attend an opening session where the objectives and specific process for the workshop are

explained

2. Depending on the needs of the workshop, all participants may stay ‘together’ for the whole workshop

(unusual) or ‘break-out’ sessions may be held that focus on specific workshop topics; anybody may attend

a ‘break-out’ session if the topic is of interest to them

3. If ‘break-out sessions are used, then it is usual for all participants to come ‘together’

4. At least once during the Event for ‘catch-up’ and information sharing.  There may be discussion about

altering the Event process

5. Toward the end of the Event for ‘catch-up’, information sharing and conclusion purposes

 Non-Co-Located Programme

For non-co-located Teams and stakeholders, use should be made of tele-conferencing and video-conferencing

technology.

Scheduling of combined and ‘break-out’ sessions can be difficult if the Teams and stakeholders are in widely

different time zones; what would normally be a half-day Event may have to become a full day or even a day and a

half.
  Co-Located Programme

For a co-located programme and stakeholders, it is essential that the ‘main room’ is big enough to hold all

participants and is equipped with white boards and flip charts.  If the room is really large, then a big screen and PA

system may be required

The ‘break-out’ sessions may be held in the same room; some or all may be held in readily accessible smaller

rooms.

 ‘Big-Room’ Formats

The detail of how the ‘big-room’ Events may be run and facilitated vary but the 2 most common are Open

Space and World Cafe.

The following are how the ‘standard’ Overall Programme Scrum Event Process may be configured for specific

Events:

 Release Planning

For one-Team Scrum we would only plan a Sprint at the beginning of a Sprint wherever we are in the Release cycle

but for a programme, the stakeholders will need to have some idea what will be in the Release and the Teams need

to produce outline Sprint Plans so that dependencies between Teams may be discovered, minimized and planned

for.

Before the joint planning session, the Programme Manager will have worked with the relevant stakeholders to set a

Release Goal and select potential features for the Release ordered by business value.

At the start the start of the Event the Programme Manager may allocate potential Release features to Teams or the

Teams can volunteer for them.

The Teams, aided by relevant stakeholders, will go into concurrent ‘break-out’ sessions to decompose the features

into User Stories and estimate the total effort required for each feature; this activity should be timeboxed to reduce

the risk of the Teams going into too much detail.

The Teams will come together to see each other’s list of User Stories, to identify dependencies and distribute User

Stories so that the effort is spread evenly between Teams.

The Teams then go back into ‘break-outs’ and produce an outline Sprint plan for each Sprint in the Release.
Finally, everybody comes together to produce/update the Release Plan Board with the outline Team Sprint Plans to

ensure that the highest value User Stories will be developed first and that inter-Team dependencies have been

catered for.

 Sprint Planning

Some Programme Teams hold their individual Sprint Planning in the same space but separately and then ‘compare

notes’ toward the end of the session to ensure that dependencies have been identified and catered for.

 Daily Scrums

Some co-located Programme Scrum Teams hold the daily Scrums at the same time and in the same space but

separately, then each team summarises any highlights to the other Teams.

Other organisations hold their Team daily Scrums as ‘normal’ and the Scrum Masters have their own ‘daily Scrum

of Scrums’ at a convenient time.

 Sprint Reviews

A programme Sprint Review involves all Teams and all relevant stakeholders so the large space is needed for a co-

located programme.

The workshop starts with the Programme Manager summarising what has gone on in the Sprint then the

stakeholders attend as many Team demonstrations and hands-on trying of functionality as ‘break-outs’, held either
in the same space or readily accessible ‘break-out’ rooms.

There are usually white boards and/or flip-charts available for stakeholders to make notes about things that they

would like to be discussed toward the end of the Review when everybody comes together again.

The final ‘all-together’ session also includes the Programme Manager asking the stakeholders if there are any

features/User Stories that need to be added to the Product Backlog; if there is anything that needs to be deleted from

the Product Backlog and if the current ordering is still viable.

For non-co-located Teams and Stakeholders, the individual ‘break-outs’ can be run as concurrent timeboxed

‘webinars’ at scheduled times throughout the Review session; each Team running several ‘webinars’ to allow as

many stakeholders the chance to ‘login’.

 Sprint Retrospectives
Although each Programme Scrum Team may hold their own Sprint Retrospective, it is important that a Programme

Sprint Retrospective is held.

A Programme Sprint Retrospective follows the Overall Programme Scrum Event Process described above; the

opening session is used to identify the good and bad things about how the programme is running and choosing the

most important issues that need to be addressed.

Each ‘break-out’ session focuses on one area of issues and any members for any Team attempt to find the root

cause of the issue and devise resolution plans.

There may be an interim coming together to discuss progress so far and maybe add to or subtract from the list of

issues to be discussed in a second ‘break-out’ session.

During the final coming together, the results of the ‘break-out’ sessions are discussed and plans are devised to

resolve the most important issues.

What techniques can I use to effect change in an organisation to help Scrum Teams be more productive?

Scrum Team productivity is difficult, if not impossible, to measure for a single Team and definitely impossible

when comparing productivity of different Teams.

The metric that Scrum Teams usually use to help them plan Sprints is the Development Team velocity; some

‘managers’ believe that Team productivity is directly linked to Team velocity; the higher the velocity, the higher
the productivity.

Nothing can be further from the truth!

Velocity is Team, product and time specific and should only be used to aid Sprint planning.

The value that a Development Team is delivering per Sprint cannot be used as a measure of productivity either; by

its very nature, a Team will deliver higher value at the start of the product development because they will be

working on higher value User Stories.

Increasing Scrum Team productivity can only come from ensuring that the fundamental ‘rules’ and ‘values’ of

Agile and Scrum are being followed.

The following are the main areas of organisational change that will help improve Scrum Team productivity:
  Senior Management Awareness and Involvement – In the 2015 State of Scrum Report it was stated that: 

“Respondents report that senior management sponsorship and support is far and away the most important factor in

adopting Scrum.”

AND

“… though senior management support is considered critical in Scrum adoption, only 7% of respondents reported

that as visible in their organizations.”

The need for senior management Agile awareness and involvement in product development is that Scrum Teams

are not isolated ‘islands’ in the organisation, they have to interact with other parts of the organisation that may

resist changes to their work practices for the Scrum Teams to be productive.

The motivation for these other organisation parts to adapt must come from senior management.  

As an example, an Agile Team was formed to implement a new process to get connecting passengers from one

aircraft to another, especially if the inbound flight was delayed.  The new process involved the development of a

new IT system and the team planned to release increments of the new software monthly.

However, when it came to the first release, the team discovered that there was an organisational process that

required 2 months before ‘desktop ready’ software could be made ‘live’.

The problem was resolved eventually by allowing the team to have a ‘fast-track’ release process but the resolution
took a month of discussions with the management of 3 other divisions within the organisation.

When an Agile/Scrum transition starts, it is important to discover all the stakeholders, at whatever level in the

organisation, that can influence the early team’s productivity and ensure that they understand the possible

implications to them and their subordinates of the Agile transition.

Mark Levison suggests one way of coping with the necessary senior management ‘education’ in his blog, Taking

Organizational Improvement with Scrum Seriously;  he proposes a ‘Change Management’ Scrum Team to develop

the organisational change product.

Keep Teams Together – The ‘traditional’ approach to product development is to create a project, assign the right

people when they are needed throughout the project; there is never one coherent team; ie ‘bring people to projects’.
The Team members in Agile have all the skills needed to complete a product development; the Team size is

generally constant for the whole product development.

If we take Tuckman’s group dynamic model, all groups of people go through ‘forming’, ‘storming’ and ‘norming’

‘phases’ before the group becomes ‘performing’; it can take a significant amount of time before the ‘performing’

stage is reached.

It therefore follows, that once a Team has reached the ‘performing’ stage, we should keep the Team together after

the product development is finished; the ability to work well together as a team is more important than any

individual skills.

Keeping teams together can be characterised as ‘bring projects to teams’.Allow the team to determine their Sprint

capacity – Some Product Owners (PO) ‘cajole’ some Development Teams to take on more work in a Sprint than the

Team members think is possible.

This has 2 possible effects on individual team members:

 They know it ‘won’t’ happen and that they will be blamed.  They become demotivated and do not work

productively

 They try to work faster to complete the work and cut-corners, producing low quality outputs.  Overall team

productivity falls because of all the necessary rework later

 The team must be allowed to do their own estimation and set their own ‘comfortable’ Sprint capacity; the
Team members must collectively believe that a Sprint plan will work at the end of Sprint Planning.

 Do not add work during the Sprint – The aim of Sprint Planning is to set the Sprint Goal and add the

relevant Product Backlog Items to the Sprint Backlog that will contribute to the Sprint Goal.

 There are still many established ‘Agile’ organisations where it is normal for Development Teams to

receive extra work during the Sprint from different people, most of which does not contribute to meeting

the Sprint Goal.

 To be productive, a Development Team need to keep focused on the Sprint Goal, distractions reduce

product development productivity.

Most of this extra work can be categorised as ‘fire-fighting’; there are 2 approaches to resolving this

‘problem’:
  Form a ‘fire-fighting’ team to deal with ad-hoc work

 Find the root cause of why this extra work is needed and fix the root cause problem.

 Allow the Team to add improvement work to the Sprint – A common management misconception about

Sprint Planning is that all the chosen Sprint Backlog Items (SBI) must be completed; the total chosen SBI

estimates must ‘fill’ the Team’s Sprint capacity.

 Not only is this unreasonable, because the effort for each SBI is only an estimate, but it also leaves no

room to implement any of the improvements that were identified during the previous Sprint Retrospective.

 A reasonable agreement must be made between the PO and the Development Team for an agreed number

of ‘Improvement’ Items to be added to the Sprint Backlog with a high priority.

What makes Scrum “Agile”?

The Scrum framework is defined in The Scrum Guide; maintained and published by Scrum.org.

To get an answer to this question you must first ask the question ’What is Agile?’.

The definition of Agile is owned by the Agile Alliance that was formed in February 2001, at Snowbird, Utah.  The

first Agile Alliance publication was the Manifesto for Agile Software Development closely followed by the 12
Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto.

So, to answer the question, the Agile Manifesto and Principles are listed below with the explanation of how the

Scrum Framework implements them.

 The Agile Manifesto

“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we

have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there

is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more”© 2001, the Agile Manifesto authors.
These are the 4 Agile Values and any product development framework that purports to be ‘Agile’ must embody

these Values in the specifics of the framework.

It is worth noting here that although the Agile Manifesto specifically talks about ‘software development’, the Agile

Values and Principles can be used to develop non-software products.

Agile Manifesto explanation and how Scrum embodies the Agile Values

 1. Individuals and Interactions:  There must be advice about how the people involved interact and communicate:

Scrum defines the roles for product development and specifies the necessary individual and group interactions.

Although Scrum does define a product development ‘process’, it is tool agnostic.

 2. Working software:  The product development team’s focus must be on producing working increments of the

proposed product and not in documenting what has or needs to be done:

The Scrum framework proposes a minimalist list of required ‘documentation’.

 3. Customer Collaboration:  The best results for product development come when all those involved work

together as one ‘team’ to solve problems whether they be business or technical people and whether they are internal

or external to the product development organisation:

Scrum defines a Scrum Team that includes business and technical people.

 4. Responding to change:  The major drawback to ‘waterfall’ processes is that they recommend obtaining all

detailed requirements before development starts and create the development plan; ‘contracts’ are set in place and

organisations think that they have a high degree of functional, time and cost predictability.  However, as we all

know, the development team discover hitherto unforeseen problems and the business change their minds. To cope
with this situation, ‘waterfall’ processes introduced ‘Change Procedures’ which became bureaucratic and time

wasting.

Scrum uses a high-level ‘requirements list, the Product Backlog, ordered by business value the content and ordering

of which is the responsibility of the Product Owner.  Furthermore, the Scrum framework has frequent, short events

that include consideration of recommended and requested changes to the Product Backlog.

 The Agile Principles

1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable

software.

The Scrum framework recommends that product development takes place with short, 2 to 3-week
 development periods, Sprints, that result in a working increment of the required product.

If appropriate, the increment may be released to the live environment at the end of a Sprint or the

increments from several Sprints may be released together at 2 to 3-month intervals.

2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the

customer's competitive advantage.

The Scrum framework recommends that the product development requirements defined before

development begins are of the lowest level of detail of the names of the business processes necessary for

the product; they are ordered by business value.

At regular intervals, at least once in every Sprint, consideration is given to requested changes to the

requirements and ordering.  The result is that the highest business value is achieved in any given

timeframe.

3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a

preference to the shorter timescale.

See Principle 1 above.

4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

Scrum defines a short, 15-minute, daily event called the Scrum, when all Development Team members,

both business and technical and whether full or part-time, come together to state what was done during the

previous day and what is planned to do for the next day.  Also stated are any problems that individual

members are facing.

Any discussion of ‘matters arising’ from the daily Scrum event are conducted after the Scrum has ended.

5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need and

trust them to get the job done.

The Scrum framework does not recognise the term ‘project’ preferring to focus on product development

which may be more open-ended than the concept of a project.

However, Scrum does implement the spirit of this Principle in that it recommends appropriate

empowerment to the Scrum Team and encourages cross-functional, self-organising Development Teams;

the day-to day work of the Development Team is the sole responsibility of the Team and not a ‘project

manager.

6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team

is face-to-face conversation.

The Scrum framework defines all the  events when the Scrum Team and stakeholders must come together
 to plan, refine and review the work and to reflect on the detail of the day-to-day activities being followed;

it suggests that these are done in face-to-face environments.

However, much of today’s product development involves people in geographically dispersed locations and

it is financially and culturally prohibitive to gather all required people at 1 location.

Although not part of the Scrum Guide, most Scrum practitioners take advantage of the abundant video-

conferencing and desktop sharing facilities available from secure internet environments.

7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.

The Scrum framework requires that the product increment requirements that are developed in a Sprint must

pass the quality criteria defined in a ‘Definition of Done’ to be considered complete and fit for

demonstration to stakeholders.

Organisational product development progress is measured by the number of requirements that have been

completed; task and activity progress, if used, is the sole responsibility of the Development Team and is

not published to persons outside of the Development Team.

8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be

able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

The Scrum Guide does not mention sustainable development specifically.

However, it is part of the Scrum Master’s responsibilities to remove impediments to the Development

Team’s progress; one such impediment may be that the Development Team as a whole, individual team

members and/or stakeholders may be working too hard.

It is a proven fact that productivity reduces when people are stressed and tired.  The Scrum Master must
look-out for signs of ‘overwork’ in those involved in the product development and help overcome the

problem.

In this way, the Scrum Master can promote sustainable development.

9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

The Scrum Guide does not mention technical excellence or good design specifically.

However, the Guide does require that only “Done” requirements can be demonstrated to stakeholders.  The

‘Definition of Done’, the checklist of criteria that defines when a requirement is “Done”, will vary from

product to product and organisation to organisation but will most probably include technical excellence and

good design criteria.

10. Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.

This is a widely misunderstood Principle but essentially means ‘only do today what is essential to do
 today’.  For example, is it essential to gather all of the detailed requirements before development work

begins? The answer is no; we gather the most important requirements at a high-level of detail; these may

change over time and the time taken getting the details ‘up-front’ will be wasted.

All of the aspects of the Scrum Guide embody a minimalist approach to the amount of work to be done.

11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

Scrum requires the use of cross-functional, empowered and self-organising teams.

12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its

behaviour accordingly.

The Scrum Guide defines the Sprint Retrospective event where the Scrum Team inspects itself and creates

a plan for improvements to be enacted during the next Sprint.

What is an acceptance criteria?

Acceptance criteria are sets of statements with clear pass and fail result that specify both functional and

nonfunctional requirements of the user story. It acts as a guiding force for the developer to know on what basis their

delivery would be evaluated for completion and correctness. Acceptance criteria is a set of expectations end user

has from a certain feature or a user story. It is the responsibility of Product owner to create the acceptance criteria

after talking to the customer.

For example: 

As a teacher, I want to generate the assessment report so that I can evaluate the student performance. Acceptance

criteria could be:

1. Show the student current assessment report

2. Show student past score

3. Provide the option to share /save/ print.

4. Display error message if the service is not working. (If the team chooses error message as a part of the

definition of done, it could be omitted from the acceptance criteria)

How is an acceptance criterion different from the Definition of Done?

Definition of Done Acceptance Criteria

It applies to all the product backlog items It applies to specific product backlog item as it clarifies one item

Development team owns definition of done

Product owner owns Acceptance criteria and development team
and it is agreed and understood by
should understand them
complete scrum team

It does not change very frequently, not Acceptance criteria is negotiable between product owner and
expected to change during the sprint development team.

Meeting Definition of Done means meets Just meeting acceptance criteria not necessarily means that
the acceptance criteria definition of done has also met.

It serves the purpose of making the It serves the purpose of clarifying the business requirements and
unambiguous understanding of any product conditions, which must be met to satisfy the users for a given
backlog item can be declared complete. requirement.

Would it bother you if your Scrum Master suggests a course of action concerning product development?
Alternatively, Can a Scrum master pitch in regarding Product Development ideas and suggestions?

A Product owner’s primary responsibility is to make sure that the incremental delivery provides continuous and

sustainable value to the customer and a Scrum master’s primary job is to make sure that Scrum team adheres to

Agile principle and Value on a daily basis.

There can be times when Scrum team or a Scrum Master want to provide ideas/suggestions with respect to product

development.

In such cases, the discussions should be done in a professional and peaceful manner to evaluate if the suggestions

are actually going to help everyone [including team, PO, Scrum master and Customer].

The discussion can be based on Earned value management concepts, Scrum Values or Agile principles to correct

the direction project is taking or make required improvements.

So, the short answer is, suggestions and ideas should not bother anyone and they should be done in a peaceful,

professional manner

What is Product Discovery process?

Product discovery means, identifying what are the points, features and functionalities that are going to be useful to

the customer, generate revenue and be realistic in terms of delivery. This requires the plans to be continuously

updated and modified keeping in line with the latest feedback from end users. So this iterative process is known as

Product discovery.

Product discovery process can be explained in the following manner:

 Organizing workshops with the end users and customers to understand their pain points and kind of

solutions they are looking for

 Usage of techniques such as wireframes, personas and user stories to help them relate with the proposed

product functionality

 With help of incremental delivery, gathering customer feedback to know which of the features they truly

liked and which ones they prefer to receive in the next release is also an important step
This way, product discovery remains an ongoing process during the project duration.

At what stage do you involve the Scrum team in the product discovery process and what are its benefits?

 The sooner the Scrum team gets involved, the better it is.

 Because Scrum team can also provide view about technical feasibility, cost and risk related estimates that

can help the PO or Sponsor have a meaningful conversation with the customer.

 It creates a better understanding of the customer pain points to the Scrum team so they get motivated to

pick up the most challenging problems for the initial sprints

How do you organize a Scrum team’s collaboration with stakeholders — and improve it over time?

Product Owner should arrange for a regular meeting between stakeholders and the team. The Team can ask the

questions related to the requirements and get them clarified. These could be related to UI format or any technical

risks. Sometimes when the stakeholders and product owners have difficulty in deciding the priority of the user

stories but during discussion session with a team which consists of different skill set will be able to decide based on

technical debt or some other hardware issues, which stories can be of high priority and can be delivered in the next

sprint.

User story mapping workshop is very important and should be arranged with the help of the Product Owner and

Scrum Master.

Sprint reviews and demos, release demos, and user interviews are also good venues for improving collaboration

between the Scrum team and stakeholders. Communication and transparency are the keys to achieve collaboration.

Wireframes, personas also can be used for better collaboration