Aiming towards Sustainable Pace “Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.” – The Agile Manifesto Principle “programmers or software developers should not work more than 40 hour weeks, and if there is overtime one week, that the next week should not include more overtime.” – Extreme Programming An unsustainable pace is unhealthy. It contributes to burnout, quality issues, and unpredictable results. If you are an agile leader – do you know whether your teams are currently operating in a sustainab ..read more

Scrum Artifacts In our final entry in the Scrum Guide companion for Leaders series (see parts 1, 2, 3, 4) we turn to the Scrum Artifacts. Scrum’s artifacts represent work or value. They are designed to maximize the transparency of key information. Thus, everyone inspecting them has the same basis for adaptation. Each artifact contains a commitment to ensure it provides information that enhances transparency and focus against which progress can be measured: For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal. For the Sprint Backlog, it is the Sprint Goal. For the Increment, it is the Definition of ..read more

Continuing the Scrum Guide companion for Leaders Series This is post 4 (out of 5) in the series: What Scrum means for Leaders. How to create the conditions for success using the Scrum Values. Scrum Roles/Accountabilities and how the Leader can serve the Scrum roles and the organization effectively. In this post, we will talk about the Scrum Events. Leaders should understand and serve the Scrum Events. Serving their teams can mean participating in an event and providing feedback. It means creating the conditions for a successful event (without participating or sometimes even BY not participat ..read more

We started the Scrum Guide for Leaders series with a discussion of what Scrum means for you as a Leader. Next, we discussed the conditions where Scrum’s Empiricism, Self-Management, and Continuous Improvement can thrive. We then explored some concrete examples of how adopting the Scrum Values as a Leader can help you create these conditions. Next, We are turning to the Scrum accountabilities/roles. This article provides a concise introduction of the 3 accountabilities on the Scrum Team. We mainly focus on considerations from a Leader perspective for how to create the conditions where the peop ..read more

How Leaders can create the conditions where Scrum can thrive As mentioned earlier, Scrum is founded on empiricism – transparency, inspection, and adaptation. Empiricism is only possible in certain cultures and contexts. Leaders have the role of creating and nurturing the culture and shaping the context. Focus Are your teams able to focus on one important mission/goal? Do they have one clear set of priorities? They know when to say “No it doesn’t make sense to start this now, our plate is full”. If you’re a senior leader this starts at the portfolio level – being able to say “let’s focus on the ..read more

Scrum – The Leader’s Perspective If you’re leading Scrum Teams or generally are a leader in an organization that’s leveraging Scrum? Are you feeling a bit left out after reading the Scrum Guide? The Scrum Guide doesn’t explicitly call out the role of the Leader but successful implementation of Scrum definitely requires leadership.  The Scrum Guide describes the leadership required by the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Developers. In this series of blogs, we’ll talk about leadership outside the Scrum Team. The first blog post will focus on what Scrum means for you as a leader. Future blo ..read more

Scaling Agile - the surprising truth about speed at scale Hosted by Yael Rabinovich After more than 20 years working in the software industry, 10 of which coaching engineering organizations on their Agile and DevOps journey, Yael Rabinovich, a SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) Program Consultant and Partner at AgileSparks, will share her experience and present a number of ways that accelerate value delivery at scale. While these ways may look simple at first, they are not easy to implement. Yael will discuss challenges organizations face and the way to overcome them while sharing stories and ..read more

Business Agility Vs. Agile and how to achieve it Hosted by SPCT, Ofer Cohen You hear the term “Business Agility” everywhere. In this webinar, we will cover what does it mean, how is it different from Agile, what actual practices you should use in order to achieve Business Agility, and how to measure it. The post [Webinar] Business Agility appeared first on AgileSparks ..read more

Coaching @ Scale: RTE and Scrum Master role in ART Success ARTs are focused on continuous improvement, and the RTE and Scrum Master are the on-board coaches to enable this growth. This webinar explores many ways that the RTE and Scrum Master can enhance the growth of the ART through coaching and mentoring. Presented by SPCT Dwayne Stroman Link to the deck used in the webinar can be found here The post [Webinar] Coaching @ Scale: RTE and Scrum Master role in ART Success appeared first on AgileSparks ..read more

Written by SPC Sachin Dhaygude Recently in retrospectives of one of the scrum teams, one team member had some strong opinions about guidelines that were defined for code reviews. Besides what to review and how to review, the guidelines also had some instructions on who should review which features / stories’ code. He strongly felt that the reviewers for his stories didn’t add much value, the code reviews waited longer for feedback, the reviewer didn’t seem to have much context, so didn’t add much value. He felt that his design reviewers or his colleagues working on the same story should have ..read more