Chapter 8 The Team In Scrum the job of planning and executing the work belongs solely to the team. The ScrumMaster can guide, advise and inform the Team, but it is the Team s responsibility to manage itself.
The Commitment Having selected the Product Backlog items for the Sprint, the team has mutually committed to turning it into an increment of potentially shippable product no one is going to tell the team what t do; he Team has to figure out its own work. The transition from a team that is managed to a team that manages itself is difficult but the payback in productivity and pleasure of work is impressive. The ScrumMaster leads the team through the transition.
The ScrumMaster job to coach the team to use inspection and adaptation of the daily Scrum to guide themselves visibility guides the quality of its work Sprint retrospectives inspect and adapt Provides time to inspect how the Scrum process worked during the last Sprint and most importantly how adjustments can improve the work in the next Sprint. Self-organization and self-management are easy to grasp on the intellectual level but implementation is the hard part.
Things that can be done to optimize team performance Scrum relies on high-bandwidth, face-to-face communication and teamwork, cubicles and unneeded artifacts promote isolation and misunderstanding. During Sprint Planning the ScrumMaster ensure and reinforce Scrum rules That the team is self-managing that the team must complete the work by the end of the Sprint, and that the work must be completely developed pieces of functionality ready for go live integration and release and that a everyone is responsible for design, development and fully testing the functionality
Daily Scrum Reports are for members of the team to be brought up-to-date on the status of each other s work It is not a report to the ScrumMaster it s the forum where members report and synchronize with each other! The usual picture is that of the team standing, facing the ScrumMaster reporting to the ScrumMaster No the reporting should to each other (a major point that is not highlighted!)
Lessons learned A team requires concrete experience with Scrum before it can truly understand how to manage itself and how to take responsibility and authority for planning and conducting its own activities. Not only must the ScrumMaster help the team to acquire this experience, but do so while overcoming his or her tendencies to take over managing the Team. Both ScrumMaster and the team must learn a new approach to management.
Knowing what it means to be clean Clean code and Quality code are synonymous Free of bugs Adheres to coding standards Refactored to remove any duplicate or poorly-structured code Contains no clever programming tricks Easy to read and understand the logic Everything necessary for the code to be sustainable and maintainable Product owner & stakeholders should expect the code is complete code is written to standards, easy to understand, is refactored, unit tested, automated regression tested & functionality tested
The frequent Builds Go live ready code is developed incrementally Continuous integration involves incrementally adding new functionality to the code base Automated tests are used to ensure that the new functionality works successfully and the existing functionality Once the new functionality is added, automated test are run to ensure that the new additions have not broke the build Note. Without continuous integration, developed code accumulates with integration done at the end with the likelihood of an accumulation of problems Scrum requires team members to completed code is checked in, added to the build, and the build regression tested to ensure the code base is error free.
Extreme Programming Practices help in understanding processes in improve the work
One of the Great Truths of SCRUM constant inspection and adaptation are necessary for successful development Successful teams do deep collaboration They develop cross functional skills testing, coding, writing and designing Maintaining the benefits of empirical process control depends on frequent inspection and adaptation to stay the course and deliver the best product possible. In the Sprint Review Product Owner/stakeholders inspect progress, determine if expectations are met, and that the highest priority needs were what was worked on.
Schwaber s Rule of Thumb based on experience or practice rather than theory Let teams figure things out on their own with no direction or coaching from the ScrumMaster The ScrumMaster is responsible for the process and removing impediments, but is not responsible for managing the development of functionality. The team is responsible for figuring out how to conduct its work. The ScrumMaster s job is to ensure the rules and practices of SCRUM are followed
Estimates should improve with Scrum The first sprint is the roughest and most imprecise. May be the first time team members have worked together The problem understanding the Product Backlog requirements may take time. New technology may need to be learned Even with the unknowns the team commits to deliver specific amount of functionality Obviously, the estimate will be imprecise (at best) Retrospectives and learning happens and estimates get better
How the process is corrupted when the imprecision and unpredictability of the effort are accepted, teams are willing to proceed and do their best. The job of the stakeholders (and ScrumMaster and management) is to accept the imprecision and proceed. However When management wants more accurate estimates may increase rewards if the team reduces the imprecision Performance reviews may weigh precision of the estimates The typical way that team members improve estimating accuracy is to drop quality or to implement the functionality with less quality None of the corners cut are visible to management the costs of which come later.
New term: Suboptimal Measurement Improvement in one part of the system causing another part of the system to degrade of fail If the team is told to demonstrate quality and actual functionality, real progress occurs If the team is told to improve the accuracy of its estimates, shortcuts will be taken The cause and effect lesson We must always factor into our measurement systems an awareness of the innate human desire to please, often regardless of the consequences.
The ScrumMaster s job Examine how the work gets done Designers were separate from Coders Coders did not do design and did not talk to Designers Testers did not talk with Coders Human interaction was minimal no face-to-interaction occurred Documentation was the only form of inter-communication and facilitate a change to get different results Team members talking and sharing Laughter and lively conversations taking place Retrospectives were engaged team members clearly enjoying the work Team members relaxed and comfortable being themselves around each other friends and peers and looked forward to coming to work the next day
Increase team productivity Scrum combined with Extreme Programming provides enhancing practices that increase the team s productivity The team s commitment to its work and the team member s commitments to each other can exponentially add to the productivity of the team Team members commit to each other that they will do something and they will help each other when needed. Aside Thomas Sun, the reclusive MIT Ph.D. No Emotional Intelligence related to the team His presence failed the test An outlier: incompatible with trust, a sense of identity, and a feeling of efficacy that bonded the team and the Scrum Master together
Conclusions When people are asked to achieve the possible, they will often try. and continue to try if not punished for not achieving everything. When people truly work together they can achieve great things often creating synergy The limits and the size of the team The exponential increase in productivity continues until a team reaches 7 ± 2 members Productivity declines person to person interactions become more difficult and complicated Miscommunications increase, mistakes rise, frustration grows
Scrum is about (intends) to achieve results in complex situations Yes there are practices that provide the opportunity to get results in complex situations optimized to the situation. Good quote to remember But Scrum is also very much about people. ScrumMasters become dedicated to their teams because teams are neighborhoods that people, including the ScrumMaster, live within.