Intro to Scrum - Heidi Araya

1. Introduction
to Scrum
Now 21 years old!
Agile Maine Day
May 5, 2017

2. Heidi
“there’s got to be a better way”
Araya
MBA, PMP, CAL, CSP, CSM, CSPO, LSSBB,
CRCMP
• Agile & Lean enthusiast
• Process improvement aficionado
• Systems thinker
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Enabling happy
workplaces by making it
fun to work together to
deliver value for the
business.
@HeidiAraya

3. What will we discuss today?
• What is Scrum and where
did it come from?
• Difference betweenAgile &
Scrum
• Where Scrum is a good fit,
and where it’s not
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Shadow – by Alex Fram
@HeidiAraya

4. Plan-Driven Approach, AKA “Waterfall”
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Requirements
Deploy
Design/Analysis
Implement
Integration
Test
Project
start
Project
end
• Large handoffs created
waste
• All-or-nothing approach
• Partially done work
• Extra features
• Handoffs
• Delays
• Defects
“The relay race approach to product development … may conflict with the goals
of maximum speed and flexibility. Instead a holistic or rugby approach – where
a team tries to go the distance as a unit, passing the ball back and forth –
may better serve today’s competitive requirements.”
(Takeuchi & Nonaka, “The New New Product Development Game,”
Harvard Business Review, 1986).
… Did not translate to success

5. History of Scrum & Agile
• 1943 - Lockheed researched and delivered a fighter jet using techniques common to Agile
• Late 1950s - NASA’s Mercury program used half-day iterations to produce working software
• 1961 - John Boyd developed the ”OODA” Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) theory for the
military, which Jeff Sutherland later borrows in developing Scrum for software
• 1970 - Royce advocates for iterative methods for delivering software but everyone understands it
to advocate “waterfall”
• 1986 - the idea of Scrum (and the name) was first proposed byTakeuchi and Nonaka in a paper
called the New New Product Development Game
• Early 1990s - Ken Schwaber began experimenting with early versions of Scrum
• 1995 - Scrum was fine tuned by Ken Schwaber & Jeff Sutherland and presented at a conference
• 1996 - Extreme Programming (XP) designed by Kent Beck
• 2001 - “Agile Manifesto” for software development (signed by 17 software leaders) – borrowed key
principles from Lean (chairman was Ken Schwaber)
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(some key dates only)
@HeidiAraya

6. Agile Manifesto - Describes 4 AgileValues
Individualsand interactions overprocesses and tools
Workingsoftwareover comprehensive documentation
Customercollaborationover contract negotiation
Respondingtochange over following a plan
We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:
That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more.
Written in 2001 by 17 software development leaders
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7. Many Agile methods, frameworks, ideas, practices
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… and more coming... But Scrum is by far the most popular
Modern
Agile

8. Scrum in <100 words
• Scrum is an agile framework that
allows us to focus on delivering the
highest business value in the
shortest time
• Scrum allows us to rapidly and
repeatedly inspect working software
• The business sets the vision and priorities.Teams collaborate and self-
organize to determine the best way to deliver these priorities
• Every few weeks anyone can see real working software and decide to
release it as is or continue to enhance it for another sprint
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By PierreSelim - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17336884

9. ScrumTheory: 3 Pillars of Empirical Process Control
Transparency
Inspection
Adaptation
@HeidiAraya
• Transparency into
progress and a common
understanding of the
process
• Inspection & adaptation
of the artifacts and the
progress towards the
goal or milestone
• Empiricism: Knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on
what is known
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10. ScrumTeam: Dedicated, Self-organizing & Cross-functional
Product
Owner
Development
Team
Scrum
Master
• Product vision
• Maximizes product value
• Optimizes work of team
• Manages and ranks
the work, keeping it
visible & transparent
• Helps team understand the work
• Accepts/rejects work
• 3-9 people responsible for developing the product
• Self-organizing: determines how to perform the work &
how much can get done in an iteration (Sprint)
• Cross-functional: May specialize, but accountability
belongs to entire team
• Coach on Scrum process
• Removes impediments
• Facilitates meetings
• Shields the team from
interruptions & external
influences
• Helps team be most
productive
• Servant leader

11. Scrum Events: time-boxed repeating events
• Provide opportunities for inspection and adaptation
Sprint Planning
Sprint
Daily Scrum
Sprint Review
Sprint
Retrospective
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12. Scrum Artifacts: represent work or value
• Contains everything desired in the
product that’s known at the time
• Features, functions, enhancements, fixes
• Backlog is a living artifact
• List of tasks & estimates to complete
needed to deliver the set of items
• Sum of all the
Product Backlog
items completed
during a Sprint &
previous sprints
• Must be useable
Sprint
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13. Inside a Sprint …
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• “Stories” are small features which can be developed independently
• Design – Build –Test collaboratively by the team
• Close collaboration across skillsets to complete each work item
• Multiple stories per sprint
Deploy
• Work highest value items first
• Complete features delivered
• Team remains focused
• No changes to sprint goal
• All skills needed to deliver
inside the team
• Deliver quality continuously
Story 1, Story 2, Story 3, …
Sprint day 1-n
@HeidiAraya

14. Estimates
• “Product Backlog items have the attributes of a
description, order, estimate and value.”
• Several ways of estimating using relative
methods:
T-shirt sizes, Story Points, Bucket System
• Development team is responsible for estimates
• The most value of estimation is in the discussion,
not the actual resulting number
Definition of Done (DoD)
• Common understanding of activities & end result required to declare the
implementation of a story completed (quality, types of testing, etc.)
• Product should have one DoD, but teams can add to it
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15. Monitoring ProgressTowards a Goal
“At any point in time in a Sprint, the total work remaining in the Sprint Backlog can
be summed."
Sprint Burndown Chart
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Story To Do In Progress Done
Story 1 Task 3
Task 2
Task 5
Task 3
Task 4
Task 2
Task 3
Task 1
Task 1
Story 4
Story 3
Story 2
Task 3
Task 4
Task 2
Task 2
Task 1
Task 1
Task 4

16. Review of Main Concepts
• Self-organizing teams
• Cross-functional teams
• Close collaboration
• Commitment to a goal
• Time-box work; no interruptions
• Inspect and adapt
• Deliver potentially shippable increments
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17. Scrum – common challenges
• Teams fall into mini waterfalls
• No Product Owner available
• Urgent interruptions during sprint
• Cross-team dependencies
• Misunderstood rituals (estimation,
standup)
• Sprint lengths are arbitrary and can
create poor behaviors
• Difficult to transform large organization
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18. Scrum advantages
• Less superfluous specifications
• Less handovers
• Flexibility in roadmap planning
• Less risk due to short iterations
• Visible progress
• Commitment to a goal can raise
productivity
• Cross-functional teams provide great
value
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19. Scrum is best for…
• Teams which are truly cross-functional
• Teams are stable
• Collocated – or great communication
(4-5 hours overlap)
• Priorities don’t change on a daily basis
• Stakeholders are easily accessible
• Environments which encourage collaboration
• Teams are willing to inspect and adapt continuously
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Heidi Araya
Agile Leader @
Phone: 407-403-3361
Email: Heidi@brightlogicgroup.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/heidiaraya/
Twitter: @HeidiAraya
Questions?