Scrum Made Easy: Become an Effective Scrum Team Member Today
Scrum is becoming the most popular of the Agile Frameworks for delivering software applications and complex products.
By the end of this course you will know what the Scrum Framework is all about and be able to contribute to the success of your projects using the Scrum methods and processes.
Learn and Master the Scrum Roles, Events and Artifacts, Enhancing Your Career Prospects and Enabling You to Become a Valued Member of Your Agile Scrum Project Team
- Be able to explain what the Scrum Framework is and how it will make your organisation more efficient in developing new products
- Understand the three pillars of the Agile Scrum Framework: Transparency, Inspection, Adaptation. And the concept of Empirical Process Control where decisions are made based only on what is known
- Feel confident participating in the formal and informal Scrum Events
Learn Why Using Agile Scrum is So Powerful in the Rapid Development of New Products
Scrum is most often used to manage complex software and product development using iterative and incremental processes
Delivering complex products using Scrum is all about creating quality, working versions that provide the highest business value in the shortest possible time
Scrum significantly increases productivity and reduces time to market compared to the traditional waterfall project management processes
The course is structured around the three Scrum perspectives of Roles, Events and Artifacts
Section one includes and overview of the Scrum Framework and the Scrum Process Flow
Section Two introduces the the Scrum Roles of Product Owner, Scrum Master and the Development Team
Section Three focuses on the Scrum events, or meetings that need to take place
Section Four includes the Scrum Artifacts that are needed for monitoring and reporting the status of the works
Section Five is where we get into the practical aspects of working with the Scrum Framework including again the Roles, Events and Artifacts
Section Six is where we wind down a little and discus the theory behind developing products using the Scrum Framework and Processes
At the end of each section there is a short multi-choice quiz to keep you on your toes
There are also downloadable spreadsheets and checklists in the resources area of lectures
Introduction to the Course
Hi, and welcome to the course. In this lecture I introduce myself, explain what the course is all about, how it is structured
By the end of this lecture you will appreciate the cyclical, incremental process used when developing a product using the Agile/Scrum framework.
Download a copy of the July 2013 Scrum Guide from the resources area
Scrum Roles
Introduction to the three roles in a scrum team delivering a product using the Agile/Scrum framework
By the end of this lecture you will have a clear understanding of the tasks and responsibilities of the Scrum Master as a member of a scrum team
By the end of this lecture you will have a clear understanding of the tasks and responsibilities of the Development Team in a project creating a product using the Agile/Scrum framework
Scrum Events, or Ceremonies, or Meetings, Whatever the Name they're the Same
Introduction to the main events in the product creation cycle
By the end of this lecture you will understand the reasons for limiting the duration of individual sprints to maximum one month and that all the key players need to be very disciplined to make the process work
By the end of this lecture you will understand the importance of a well planned and facilitated coming together of the scrum team to agree what is in and what is out of the next sprint backlog
By the end of this lecture you will know to attend and the answers you need in the all important daily stand up meeting and with so little time…
By the end of this lecture you will appreciate the need for active participation from all key stakeholders so that the current increment and revised product backlog is exactly what they expect
By the end of this lecture you will appreciate there can be no ego when conducting the sprint retrospective and that’s good for the team
By the end of this lecture you will understand the need to groom or refine the product backlog continuously. And make sure it is reviewed and updated before the sprint planning sessions
Scrum Artifacts: Necessary for Transparency, Inspection and Adaptation
By the end of this lecture you will know what artifacts are needed in a practical scrum based project for transparency, inspection and adaptation of the product of the project
By the end of this lecture you will have a clear understanding of the product backlog, who owns it, what’s inside it and most importantly that the product backlog is constantly changing as the work progresses and more details can be included
By the end of this lecture you will understand the difference between the Product Backlog and the Sprint Backlog, who is responsible for what and that the Product Backlog Items are decomposed to produce tasks in the Sprint Backlog
By the end of this lecture you will know that the Increment is a potentially shippable product
The definition of done is used to assess the completeness of the work on each increment and by the end of this lecture you will understand how important it is that the whole scrum team have a common understanding
By the end of this lecture you will understand the importance of showing the real status of the work with an emphasise on the work not done and the effort needed to complete that committed work within the sprint time-box
By the end of this lecture you will know what a sprint task board looks like and the importance of keeping it up to date
Scrum in Practice
By the end of this lecture you will have a better understanding of the practical application of the scrum processes when developing a product incrementally and iteratively.
By the end of this lecture you will be able to develop product backlog items by writing effective user stories that can be estimated, prioritised and considered as “Ready” for inclusion in the next sprint
By the end of this lecture you will have a better understanding of the life cycle of a user story from creation, through to understanding and onto delivery of the end result
The mnemonic INVEST may help you remember a set of criteria that can be used to assess the quality of a user story
By the end of this lecture you will know what acceptance criteria look like and understand the importance of defining the acceptance criteria before work starts on creating the feature or requirement
By the end of this lecture you will know the main areas of responsibility of the product owner and where he needs to focus his attention
By the end of this lecture you will understand the complex nature of the Scum Master role and the need for the very best in communication skills
By the end of this lecture you will know the main responsibilities of the development team and how they should behave
By the end of this lecture you will be able to contribute to the creation and grooming of a product backlog
By the end of this lecture you will know how to conduct an effort estimating session using the technique called Planning Poker
By the end of this lecture you will understand the different ways to the measure the effort needed to complete tasks and be introduced to the concept of Story Points
By the end of this lecture you will understand the concept of ‘story points’ and be able to apply the process in your effort estimating sessions
By the end of this lecture you will understand the velocity metric and use it in your sprint planning, release planning and use it to estimate the probable completion date for your product
By the end of this lecture you know what the sprint goal is, it’s benefits and how best to develop it
By the end of this lecture you will know that the sprint backlog is defined during sprint planning sessions and it is after all only an objective, a target to aim for
By the end of this lecture you will become a valued contributor to the sprint planning meeting
By the end of this lecture you will be able to create your own burn-down chart using MicroSoft Excel.
There is also a downloadable template in the resources area for you to use
By the end of this lecture you understand the need to prepare for this daily meeting, that it is not to report status but to synchronise activities of the development team
By the end of this lecture you will know what to expect when you attend a sprint review
By the end of this lecture you will know the importance of a well facilitated scrum retrospective
In this lecture you will be able to download a set of checklists that you can use to measure the health of your project processes
By the end of this lecture you will have a solid understanding of the need for a structured, repeatable process for prioritising product backlog items and sprint backlog tasks. Then we discus the MoSCoW Technique for prioritisation: The Must Have, The Should Have, The Could Have and the Would Have But Probably Won’t Get.
Earned Value Analysis integrates scope, cost, schedule and most importantly the progress of the actual work.
The result is a set of measurements that provides an early warning of performance issues allowing time for changes to be made to get back on track.
The application in traditional waterfall projects is very effective however introducing the same metrics in a Scrum project appears to be overly complicated and well just not worth it.
Well I say that’s not true as long as we are pragmatic about the whole process and we adapt the waterfall approach to the scrum framework.
A Little Theory…
By the end of this lecture you will appreciate the differences between managing a project using traditional waterfall approach and using an Agile/Scrum approach
By the end of this lecture you will know the four values and the twelve principles of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development
By the end of this lecture you will appreciate that Scrum is a lightweight agile framework focusing on delivering highest business value in the shortest possible time
