Book Image

The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook

By : Stacia Viscardi
Book Image

The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook

By: Stacia Viscardi

Overview of this book

A natural and difficult tension exists between a project team (supply) and its customer (demand); a professional ScrumMaster relaxes this tension using the Scrum framework so that the team arrives at the best possible outcome."The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook" is a practical, no-nonsense guide to helping you become an inspiring and effective ScrumMaster known for getting results.This book goes into great detail about why it seems like you're fighting traditional management culture every step of the way. You will explore the three roles of Scrum and how, working in harmony, they can deliver a product in the leanest way possible. You'll understand that even though there is no room for a project manager in Scrum, there are certain “management” aspects you should be familiar with to help you along the way. Getting a team to manage itself and take responsibility is no easy feat; this book will show you how to earn trust by displaying it and inspiring courage in a team every day."The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook" will challenge you to dig deep within yourself to improve your mindset, practices, and values in order to build and support the very best agile teams.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
Acknowledgment
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 4: Sprint! Valuable, Collaborative, and Meaningful Work


  1. Are your team members dedicated to the team sprint after sprint? If not, add an item to your impediments backlog (IBL).

  2. Is the team made up of multiple disciplines so that they may deliver a set of fully tested features by the end of each sprint? If not, add an item to your IBL.

  3. Is your Scrum team Scrummerfalling, or doing some other weird form of Scrum? If so, add this item to your IBL and think about the discussion you'd like to have with the team in the next retrospective. Specifically, are they doing a Scrum hybrid due to a true constraint or an organizational dysfunction? Is a broader discussion necessary with management? How will you prepare for that discussion?

  4. Do you manage or direct the daily scrum meetings? What can you do to stop this? Are the team members getting into deep enough detail to truly synchronize? If not, how can you help? Are they going into too much detail? If so, how do you help them? Are they making obstacles known, or are they too shy? What can you do about this if you suspect they're not forthcoming with issues? Are team members willing to help each other solve their issues/impediments? If not, how can you encourage this behavior?

  5. Let's say that your organization does not have a trusting culture. How might you utilize the Scrum meetings to build such a culture? Are there any action items that you can come up with after thinking about this?

  6. Which of the four corporate culture adjectives— Collaborative, Creative, Competitive, Controlling—best describe your organization?

  7. If the organization does not value openness, respect, commitment, focus, and courage, how might this impact your team? What will you do about this? How will you tangibly know that you've made an impact on the organization's values?

  8. To what degree can you influence your peers, your team, your product owner, your manager, your VP, and your CEO? Which style might you choose to influence each type of co-worker (consider: demand, demonstrate, request, persuade, avoid).

  9. Which of the four legs of Scrum—self-managing, dedicated teams; time-boxing (sprints); prioritized product backlog; or inspect/adapt—will be most difficult to implement in your organization? Why?