Entertaining introduction to Scrum. Supported by stories from how different companies have implemented the framework. Liked that the author explains the why behind the framework, not just the how, and that he’s doing it in an accessible and easy way. Gave me a more meaningful understanding of how Scrum can be integrated into projects.

#Things to consider

  • The sooner you have some feedback, the quicker you can make a better product.
  • The purpose of the MVP is to get feedback.
  • Don’t focus on delivering a whole list of things, focus on delivering what’s valuable, what people actually want or need.
  • Scrum uses what’s called an “Inspect and Adapt” cycle.
  • Scrum is akin to evolutionary, adaptive, and self-correcting systems.

#What is Scrum?

The term Scrum comes from the game of rugby, it’s the way a team works together to move the ball down the field. Every project involves discovery of problems and bursts of inspiration. Trying to restrict change, and trying to know the unknowable is a waste. Ask yourself “What will bring the most value to the project?” Do those things first. Scrum was invented in 1993 by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber.

#Working in sprints

Scrum works by setting sequential goals that must be completed in a fixed length of time. At the end of each cycle, there should be a finished increment of product. Something should be working that can be shown to anyone who wants to look. This methodology allows teams to get near real-time feedback on their work. Scrum requires practice and attention, but also a continuous effort to reach a new state — a state where things just flow and happen.

Sprints are what are often called “time boxes.” They consist of a set duration. You can’t do an one-week sprint and then a three-week sprint. You have to be consistent.After working in sprints and engaging in stand-ups for a while you start seeing time as something fundamentally cyclical. Each sprint is an opportunity to do something totally new, each day a chance to improve. At the end of each sprint, you should have something that’s done, something that can be used and is demonstrable.

#Kaizen

In Japanese the word for “improvement” is kaizen. “What is the little improvement that can be done right away that will make things better?” What are the things that actually make people happy? Autonomy, mastery, and purpose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen

#The Agile Manifesto

The term agile dates back to 2001 and was first mentioned in the Agile Manifesto.

The agile manifesto declares a set of values:

  • Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
  • Working software over comprehensive documentation.
  • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
  • Responding to change over following a plan.
  • Planning is useful. Blindly following plans is stupid.

Scrum is the framework for putting those values into practice.

#Scrum roles

In Scrum there are only three roles:

  1. You’re either part of the team doing the work.
  2. Or you’re the Scrum Master, helping the team figure out how to do the work better.
  3. Or you’re the Product Owner, deciding what the work should be.

The product owner is accountable for translating the team’s productivity into value.

#Remove the impediments

One of the key tasks in Scrum is to identify and remove impediments so that the process can flow and accelerate. Eliminating waste must be a business’s first objective.

#Shu Ha Ri

Shuhari is a concept in Japanese martial art which points to different levels of expertise: In the Shu state you know all the forms and rules. You repeat them until you’ve absorbed them. In the Ha state you start making innovations, adding an extra layer on the rules you’ve mastered. In the Ri state you’re able to be creative in an unhindered way. You can discard the forms because you’ve truly mastered practice. The art is embedded in you.

#Principles of Scrum

  • One of the key concepts in Scrum is that the team members decide themselves how they’re going to do the work. They’re self-organizing.
  • “Whenever there are handoffs between teams, there is the opportunity for disaster.”
  • If you have more than nine people on a team, their velocity actually slows down. More resources make the team go slower.

#Brooks’s Law

Brook’s law — “Adding more manpower to a late software project makes it later.” Keep your teams small.

#Create something that works

In LEAN manufacturing, the idea is to minimize the amount of half-built stuff lying around. If a thing is half done at the end of the sprint, you’re worse off than if you hadn’t started at all. It’s better to create something smaller—something that really works.

#LEAN manufacturing

Lean manufacturing, or production, is a method originating in the Japanese manufacturing industry for the minimization of waste. The management philosophy is mostly derived from the Toyota production process. It was identified as “LEAN” in the 90’s.

#Get rid of waste in production

Taiichi Ohno, considered to be the father of LEAN manufacturing, at Toyota Production System talked about three different types of waste:

  1. Muri — waste through unreasonableness.
  2. Mura — waste through inconsistency.
  3. Muda — waste through outcomes.

#Fix the problem directly

When you’re working on a project, there’s a whole mind space that you create around it. You’re holding a complicated construct in your head. Recreating that construct a week later is hard. Fixing a problem when you first discover it is much more efficient than solving it a week later. It can take as much as 24 times as long a week later.

#Avoid the context switch

Be conscious of the cost of context switching. Every time you’re switching context, you lose 20% of your focus that goes to waste. If you have one project you can dedicate 100% of your time to it. When you have two projects you have 40% available for each, 20% is loss to context switching.

#Working more is not the answer

Working more hours stops producing more output. The peak of productivity falls a little bit less than 40 hours a week. Working late isn’t a sign of commitment—it’s a sign of failure. Working less helps you get more done with higher quality. Work too many hours and you start making mistakes—which take more effort to fix than to create.

#Ego depletion

Any choice involves an energy cost. Your capacity to make good decisions diminishes with each choice. Whatever resource is burned up by making decisions is also used up in self-regulation. By not working so much, you’ll get more and better work done. The very act of planning can be so alluring that the planning itself becomes more important than the actual plan. And the plan becomes more important than reality.

#Definition of ready

When you’re writing a story use the INVEST criteria to check if your story is ready:

  • Independent: the story must be actionable and “completable” on its own.
  • Negotiable: until it’s actually being done, it needs to be able to be rewritten.
  • Valuable: it actually delivers value to a customer, user, or stakeholder.
  • Estimable: you have to be able to size it.
  • Small: the story needs to be small enough to estimate and plan for it easily.
  • Testable: the story must have a test it is supposed to pass in order to be complete.

For each story pursued there should be both a Definition of ready and a Definition of done. Once you have your velocity, you can figure out the most important thing in Scrum: what’s keeping us from going faster? Get rid of waste in production is the key to accelerating teams.

#Definition of done

Everyone must know when something is done or not. There should be clear standards that any piece of work has to meet. You do need a plan but the key is to refine the plan throughout the project, rather than do it all up front. People are terrible at estimation, but what we are good at is relative sizing, comparing one size to another.

#The Fibonacci sequence

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21. Each number in the series is the sum of the two previous numbers. The sequence is how nature lays itself out. It’s everywhere. In the shell of a nautilus, in the petals of a pine cone, the bumps on a pineapple. This is where the Golden Ratio comes from. Humans are programmed to find the ratios attractive.

#Informational cascade

Someone comes up with an idea and everyone starts talking about it. Even if you disagree with it initially, you go along because the group is going along. This is called groupthink. Even if someone has reservations about an idea or solution they go along because everyone else is excited.

#Think in stories

People think in narratives, in stories. That’s how we understand the world. When you’re considering a task, think about who this task is being done for. Whose lens on the world is the one we need to gaze through when we’re building this thing?Then think of the what—what is needed done in the first place? Finally, you need to think about motivation—why does this character need this thing? Stories should be specific enough to be actionable but don’t prescribe how they’re going to be done. The team decides how the work will be accomplished.

#The OODA Loop

Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. The combination of “observation” and “orientation” leads to a “decision,” which leads to “action.” Then the loop restarts itself with new results and input. People don’t really know what they want until they can try something. What the customer actually wants is rarely what the customer says she wants.

#Planning poker

By using planning poker in your estimates you avoid any kind of anchoring behavior such as the bandwagon or the halo effect. It allows the whole team to share knowledge on a particular task. It’s crucial that the team doing the actual work is also doing the estimations.

#The Halo effect

When one characteristic of something influences how people perceive other, unrelated characteristics. For example, if someone is good-looking, everyone assumes that he’s also smart and trustworthy.

#Gantt charts doesn’t work

The Gantt chart was invented around 1910 and were first used in World War I. Why a World War I artifact has become the de facto tool used in twenty-first-century project management is still a mystery. The problem with the Gantt chart is once that beautifully elegant plan meets reality, it falls apart.

#eduScrum

Scrum has started being adopted in schools. Students form teams which are cross-functional. At every lesson there is a Scrum board for the material that should be learned. Students even define their own homework. After each set of lessons, the teams do a retrospective.