Certified Scrum Master (CSM)

A WORKBOOK FOR REFERENCE TO HELP YOU BECOME A GREAT SCRUM MASTER

Mark Palmer
CERTIFIED SCRUM TRAINER & AGILE COACH

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SCRUM ALLIANCE CERTIFICATIONS ...............................................................................................................................2

YOUR INSTRUCTOR ........................................................................................................................................................3

SELF-ORGANIZATION .....................................................................................................................................................4

AGILE OVERVIEW ...........................................................................................................................................................5

THE AGILE MANIFESTO ................................................................................................................................................13

PRINCIPLES BEHIND THE AGILE MANIFESTO ...............................................................................................................14

SCRUM VALUES ...........................................................................................................................................................15

SCRUM OVERVIEW ......................................................................................................................................................16

SCRUM ROLES ..............................................................................................................................................................19

BUILD YOUR OWN SCRUM ..........................................................................................................................................21

ENGINEERING PRACTICES ............................................................................................................................................22

DEFINITION OF DONE ..................................................................................................................................................23

SCRUM ARTIFACTS .......................................................................................................................................................24

TEACH BACK .................................................................................................................................................................27

PRODUCT VISION .........................................................................................................................................................28

USER STORIES ..............................................................................................................................................................29

ESTIMATION ................................................................................................................................................................30

SIMULATION ................................................................................................................................................................31

COACHING ...................................................................................................................................................................32

POWERFUL QUESTIONS ...............................................................................................................................................37

FACILITATION ...............................................................................................................................................................40

MEETING FACILITATION GUIDE ...................................................................................................................................45

SETTING EXPECTATIONS ..............................................................................................................................................54

NOTES ..........................................................................................................................................................................55

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Scrum Alliance Certifications

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 • 25 years IT experience
• 10 Years as a Developer
• 5 years as a Waterfall Project Manager
• Owned 3 businesses
• 16 years agile experience
o 6 years as a Scrum Master
o 2 years as a Product Owner
o 5 years as an Agile Coach
o 3 years as a Trainer

Mark Palmer
mark@greatfishagility.com
www.greatfishagility.com
www.linkedin.com/in/markcpalmer/

Scrum Alliance Certifications

Other Agile/Scrum Certifications

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 Self-Organization
Self-organization is to Scrum as the heart is to the human body. Without it, Scrum cannot reach
its fullest potential.

Can a team be successful without regular retrospectives?

What did you notice about your speed from round to round?

What did you notice about your quality from round to round?

When did you learn the most, doing up-front planning before round 1, or by doing round 1?

Did you notice team members helping each other? And not keeping information to
themselves?

What did you notice about your team dynamics as we moved from round to round?

How did you feel personally in rounds 1, 2 and 3?

Did you feel motivated in rounds 1, 2 and 3?

How did you feel personally in round 4?

Did you feel motivated in round 4? If not, why?

What if I asked you to plan all 4 rounds before starting round 1? Would your estimates have
been anywhere near your actuals? In real life are we asked to estimate big projects up front
even before a team is formed? Does that seem extra silly now?

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Agile Overview

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The Agile Manifesto

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Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto

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Scrum Values

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Scrum Overview

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The 3 pillars necessary for Empirical The 3 roles in scrum are:
Process Control (and therefore scrum)
are: 1.

1. 2.

2. 3.

3.
The 5 events (also known as “inspect & adapt
points”) are:
The 3 artifacts in scrum are:
1.
1.
2.
2.
3.
3.
4.
The 5 values of scrum are:
5.
1.
The 1 activity in scrum is:
2.

3. 1.

4.
A sprint is a _____ - _____ of one
5.
___________ or less.

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Scrum Roles

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The Scrum Master The Product Owner

1. 1.

2. 2.

3. 3.

4. 4.

5. 5.

6. 6.

7. 7.

The Development Team

What about the Project Manager?

1. What about
me?
2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

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Build Your Own Scrum

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Engineering Practices

Engineering Concept Short Definition

Pair Programming

Code Refactoring

Technical Debt

Test Driven Development

Continuous Integration

Continuous Delivery

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 Definition of Done
A sample definition of done taken from an actual scrum team is below. The
items below are by no means required for the team you serve. But they are a
good guideline/starting point.

Code meets coding and naming

Write code components
standards and checked into repository
Create/update unit tests Unit tests pass 100% - zero defects

Conduct code review All issues addressed

Create wireframes and UI UI meets standards

Update design document Document reviewed

Create/update automated acceptance Acceptance tests pass 100% - zero
test defects
Perform code coverage test Code coverage is same or better %
Integration test pass 100% - zero
Run integration tests
defects
Run performance tests Same or better performance

Update user guide Updates reviewed and checked in

Update online context help Updates reviewed and checked in

PBI demonstrated for PO, acceptance
Product Owner Accepted
criteria met
Update build scripts Builds completing without error

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Scrum Artifacts
The Product Backlog

Owner:
Items in it are called?
How often can order change?
Who collaborates on items in it?
When do items get added?
PBIs can be updated at any time by the?
The Product Backlog lists all:

The Sprint Backlog

Owner:

How often can the order change?

Who decides to add/remove tasks
during a sprint?
Who decides when to add/remove PBIs
during a sprint?

The Increment

What is it?

The Increment must be:

The Increment must meet the team’s:

The Increment is a step toward:

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Scrum Events
The Sprint

Purpose:
Duration:
Inputs:
Outputs:

Sprint Planning

Purpose:
Duration:
Attendees:
When:
Inputs:
Outputs:

Daily Scrum

Purpose:
Duration:
Attendees:
When:
Inputs:
Outputs:

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Sprint Review

Purpose:
Duration:
Attendees:
When:
Inputs:
Outputs:

Sprint Retrospective

Purpose:
Duration:
Attendees:
When:
Inputs:
Outputs:

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 Teach Back
The best way to learn is to teach. And the best way to help your company
succeed with Agile and Scrum adoption is for YOU to educate them. The teach
back will give you practice at two key skills:
1. Teaching others what you’ve learned
2. Conveying the value of doing thing differently than they are used to doing them
Fill out the details about your experience below:
For the Teach Back my
partner was: Tiffany

Sprint is the container for Scrum and has the Planning at the beginning, the Retro and
Review at the end, and Refinement is that something that happens continually
throughout the sprint.

Every day there's a Daily scrum that is owned by the Development team, but the Scrum
Master and Product Owner are optional attendees.

The planning is what produces the Sprint Backlog. This is ever-changing due to
requirement changes and shifts if priority from the team.

When the team is planning the Sprint Backlog, it is better to underpromise and oversell,
then the opposite.

The output of the Sprint is the Incremenet which is the sum of all the PBIs completed in
that sprint as well as the value from the previous sprints.

Agile is a mindset in a way of being while scrim is the framework.

Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional

We plan in sprints which are incremental and iterative pieces which can last a month or
less.

We have what we receive a version of the product at the end of each sprint.

PBI backlog and Sprint Backlog. PBI is owned by PO. Sprint by Development Team.

The PO is accountable for the work that is being done. Dev Team is responsible for
completing the work. Scrum Masters help the different teams collaborate, resolve
escalated issues, and facilitate and help determine where there might be waste in
backlog.

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Product Vision
For: (target customer)

Who needs: (statement of need or opportunity)

The: (product name)

Is a: (type of product)

That: (key benefit, reason to buy)

Unlike: (primary competitive alternative)

Our Product: (statement of primary differentiation)

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 User Stories
Invitation to a conversation
What is a User Story? ________________________________________

What are the 3 C’s of a User Story?

Card - The story itself

Conversation- Requirements
Confirmation - Acceptance Criteria

Front of Card Back of Card

user
As a __________________ I know this story is done when…
o Acceptance Criteria 1
the feature
I want _________________
o Acceptance Criteria 2
why?/beneft
So that ________________ o Acceptance Criteria 3

Backlog Refinement
When does it
Independent/Immediately Actionable
happen? As needed
Negotiable How long does it
Upto 10% of Dev Capacity. 1 day for 2 weeks
last?
Valuable What’s the
Shared understanding of PBIs, estimate and split
purpose?
Estimatable Who is in
charge? Nobody/Everybody
Small PBI Attributes
Testable D escription: Who/What/Why/AC
O rder
V alue
E stimate

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Estimation

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 Simulation
You will have 2 sprints to build the product you created in your product vision. The sprint
structure will be as follows:

Sprint Planning (5 minutes)

 Part 1:
1. Dev team decides “what” stories to bring into the sprint
2. PO clarifies any questions
3. PO and dev team together create sprint goal
 Part 2:
1. Dev team figures out “how” to build each story and creates necessary
development tasks

Build Your Product (10 minutes)

 Development Team members build the product, Product Owners do not.
 Product Owners have 2 jobs during this timebox:
1. Answer any questions the Development Team has about the stories on which
they are working.
2. Accept or reject completed stories based on acceptance criteria.

Update Your Metrics and Info Radiators (3 minutes)

 Update your Scrum Board; burndown chart; and Sprint Report

Sprint Review (3 minutes)

 Provide available metrics
 Demonstrate the Product Increment to your customer

Backlog Refinement (5 minutes)

 If any changes are needed in your product backlog, this is the time to make them.

Retrospective (2 minutes)
 How can your team improve itself for the next sprint?

What were your takeaways?

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Coaching

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Powerful Questions

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Facilitation

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Meeting Facilitation Guide

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Setting Expectations

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Notes

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