scrum

Scrum team member talking during daily standup Supporting Scrum: Adopt before You Adapt

Scrum is a fairly minimal agile process framework that you can adapt to work best for your team. But adaptation works best once the team has internalized the principles and values of the Scrum process, and that takes practice. In other words: Before you start to adapt Scrum, first try fully adopting the framework.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk
ScrumMaster facilitating communication between an agile team and stakeholders Understanding the ScrumMaster's Role in Team Communication

Some agile teams believe the ScrumMaster is the sole point of communication between them and the product owner, so the team can abdicate any responsibility to communicate with stakeholders. That couldn't be more wrong. It's actually the ScrumMaster's job to enable communication and coach or guide the team to solutions.

Alan Crouch's picture
Alan Crouch
Two agile developers learning together Maximizing Agile by Understanding Learning Styles

To be most agile with your communication, understand several models of learning styles, where you fit into them, and where your team fits into them. By tweaking the ways you communicate to fit the information and the situation, you are helping your team remain agile by valuing people and interactions over processes.

Robin Foster's picture
Robin Foster
Scrum team having a productive retrospective Are Your Retrospectives Adding Value to Your Scrum Team?

Sprint retrospectives are often skipped, compressed, or organized in a way that doesn't provide good feedback. This is unfortunate, as a well-planned retrospective is a great way to improve how you work. Good retrospectives enable engagement and safety, distill and prioritize ideas, and create concrete action items.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk
Software team in a meeting The Myth of Too Many Scrum Meetings

A common complaint in organizations adopting Scrum is that Scrum has too many meetings. However, people may not be considering all the time they spent meeting before Scrum—and how effective that time really was. As long as you keep meetings focused, people should waste less time in meetings than they did before Scrum.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk
Red apple fitting in with green apples Making Testing Work within Your Sprints

A common problem for Scrum teams is having a good understanding of what work is complete by the end of the sprint. Teams often end with a few items coded but not fully tested, but since the goal of a sprint is to have a deliverable increment of work, skipping tests isn’t a good idea. Here's how you can fit them in.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk
Looking upward at trees in a forest Scrum Can Help You See the Forest and the Trees

In project management, it's easy to focus on details to the extent that you lose track of the larger goal. Scrum can help you identify flaws and gaps, and skipping or trivializing Scrum events will just hide the fact that there are things you need to improve. Finding problems is something to be celebrated, not hidden.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk
A watch with the second hand moving fast The Agile Culture You Need for Faster Pull Requests

Is your process for pull requests compromising your team's agility? You can structure your changes in a way that facilitates more rapid feedback, but even then it is still possible to have a slow integration time if people don’t review pull requests promptly. Mechanics are part of it, but culture also matters.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk