Scrum: It’s supposed to be simple

If you go to the agile manifesto website, the manifesto itself is articulated in clear and succinct terms.

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

Just below this there’s another paragraph, which is often overlooked.

That is, while there is value in the items on the right,
we value the items on the left more.

Sometimes teams and individuals forget, choose to forget, or have never learned, that ignoring “inconvenient” things is a recipe for disaster.

A "Quick and Dirty" quiz

If you’re implementing an agile process like Scrum, focus in on the end of a Sprint, and ask yourself some questions.

1. Do the team hold a Sprint Review at the end of every Sprint? When don’t they?
   
   • When don’t they?
     
2. In that Sprint Review do the team demonstrate the software working with changes they’ve made? 
   
   • Do they talk about what they’ve done instead of demonstrating it, perhaps with slides?
     
3. Does the Product Owner attend every Sprint Review?
   
   • When don’t they come?
     
4. Does testing complete within the context of the Definition of Done and within the Sprint? 
   
   • Is it split off into a secondary activity?
     
5. Does the Product Owner agree with the team that a Story is Done, or not, within the Sprint Review?
   
   • Or not?
     
6. Do customers, managers, executives and people from other teams attend the Sprint Review?
   
   • Or not?
     

One Scrum “ceremony”, six simple questions. If you’re doing “everything” in that first part of the question then give yourself 10 points; if you’re never doing them, not doing them or don’t recognise it in the team then give yourself a 0.

If you’re “in between” or find yourself thinking more about the question at the second level, then give yourself a mark appropriately.

Add them all up.

Interpreting the results

If you get 60 then your team is holding at least this Scrum ceremony in line with Agile principles. The further they are from this nirvana, the more challenged they will be in terms of the agile manifesto as a whole, and their effectiveness and performance will suffer.

Each of the questions refers to one or more of the assertions made in the manifesto.

Questions 1, 3 and 6 talk to the importance of individuals and interactions

Questions 2, 4 and 5 are facets to the concept of working software

Questions 5 and 6 speak to customer collaboration by the team

The questions don’t explicitly highlight how well the team responds to change, as change, and especially unplanned change can be disruptive when it arrives during a Sprint Review! However, reflecting on how bugs that are uncovered in the context of one Sprint’s story, or how the team responds if what they deliver doesn’t match what the Product Owner thought had been asked for, will give you insight into that dimension as seen through the lens of the Sprint Review.

Wrapping it up

Conducting this exercise won’t fix any problems that there are, but it should help to bring some data to help you gauge both the size of the problem, and the urgency to address it. If you want to explore the subject in more depth then do get in touch.

"Balancing Rocks - 148/365" by Mr Moss is licensed under CC BY 2.0