Implementing Scrum

Many times (unfortunately more than I want to hear) I got bad news about implementing (or worse using) Scrum. After doing a research here and there I realised what it is one of the main issues, training is not enough to adopt Scrum values.

Self-Organise teams

If the company got a good training with a great Scrum Coach that teach Scrum (including an activity or game to wrap all Scrum ceremonies at once) won't be good enough, if for instance a manager will fill the role of Scrum Master assigning user stories to each team member or the Sprint backlog is sent to several developers that work for a different company who receive the requirements that must finish in two weeks (most companies prefer this period of time for their Sprint) because this is not Scrum.

Self-organize means that team members during the Sprint Planning decides to be responsible for working in several user stories according to their technical background.

Roles and duties

As Agile Coach I am hired to help Scrum teams (and kanban as well) to improve their Agile practices but sometimes I run into with really bad scenarios such as Sprint Planning conducted without the presence of Product Owner so he has to wait to Sprint Review to see what the Scrum team was doing.

My suggestion to every company that wants to adopt Scrum is the following steps. First of all every member has to be trained (starting with top Directors with at least Roles and duties, Ceremonies and what Scrum means) . If the company consider this training too expensive they could start with IT area and them move slowly the knowledge to the rest of the company so finally everybody will be in the same page. Secondly, I strongly recommend to hire an Scrum Master to help team members (and in the future coach new developers) with Scrum practices and coach Product Owners to fill out their role properly.

To conclude, imagine you want to play tennis but you have no idea  to do it. Well,  you need someone to teach every aspect of the game and help even choosing a tennis racket for you as beginner (Scrum training). Then you need someone with more experience than you to improve your game (Scrum Master). As soon as you become a good player you should hire and tennis coach to play better and correct your failures (Agile Coach).

If you want to discuss this topic reach me at twitter (@metlucero), Skype (metlucero) or Email: [email protected]

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