Scrum Basics Flashcards
What is the Agile Mindset?
Agile Mindset: is the way of thinking and acting according to Agile values and principles.
Being Agile means that you have the agile mindset instead of just following practices outlined by some framework without understanding the reason behind these practices.
What is Agile?
Agile: is a particular mindset that is based on a well-defined set of values and principles.
Try to understand the values and principles and live them.
What is the Agile Manifesto?
Agile Manifesto: is a document written in 2001 by seventeen independent-minded software practicioners, known as “The Agile Alliance”, that identifies 4 core values and 12 principles.
What are Agile Practices?
Agile Practices: are the various activities and processes used by an Agile team to apply the Agile mindset to their workload. The most common Agile practices are: backlog preparation & refinement, review events, retrospectives etc…
Implementing only the practices without the mindset is Doing Agile without Being Agile. And it leads to frustration.
What are the 4 Agile Values?
- Individuals & Interactions - over - Processes & Tools
- Working Software - over - Comprehensive Documentation
- Customer Collaboration - over - Contract Negotiation
- Responding to Change - over - Following a Plan
What are the first six Agile Principles?
- Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
- Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
- Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
- Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
- Build projects around motiviated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
- The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a developtment team is face-to-face conversation.
What are the next six Agile Principles?
- Working software is the primary measure of progress
- Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
- Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
- Simplicity - the art of maximizing the amount of work not done - is essential
- The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
- At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
What is an adaptive approach in project management?
Also called change-driven approach. It adapts to the project’s changing environment. This is suitable for projects with high levels of uncertainty and volatility, and in which requirements are likely to change throughout the project. This involves frequent planning and can be iterative, incremental or both as in agile.
What is a predictive approach in project management?
Also called plan-driven or waterfall. It’s the traditional work management approach, where the scope, time, cost, requirements, and acceptance criteria are planned and determined upfront before starting work execution. This approach is sequential and rigid, with a single delivery and predefined overlapping phases.
Explain the iterative approach.
It implies a high-level scope definition at the beginning of the project while progressively developing the cost and schedule through timeboxed iterations as requirements become clearer until the final product is fully developed.
Explain the incremental approach.
It delivers ready-to-use product functionalities to the customer at the end of each iteration. These partial outcomes are known as increments, which present functional, tested, demonstrated, and accepted subsets of the final deliverable.
What Roles do you have in Scrum?
- Product Owner (Represents the customer, shares the vision, manages the product backlog)
- Scrum Master (Supports the team, maintains the scrum process, removes impediments)
- Development Team (Delivers the increment, is self-organized, is cross-functional)
What Events do you have in Scrum?
- The Sprint
- Sprint Planning
- Daily Scrum
- Sprint Review
- Sprint Retrospective
What Artifacts do you have in Scrum?
- Product Backlog
- Sprint Backlog
- Increment
What “Best Practices” do you have in Scrum?
- User Stories
- Poker Planning
- Scrum Board
- Backlog Refinement
What are the three pillars of empiricism in Scrum?
Scrum is based on Empiricism. This means knowledge comes from experience and decision-making is based on what is observed.
Transparency: Work is visible to those doing and receiving it.
Inspection: Progress towards goals is frequently inspected.
Adaptation: Deviation is addressed ASAP through rapid adjustment
What is the broad definition of a Product Owner, also compare it to a Product Manager.
The Product Owner serves as a SPOC (Single Point of Contact) between the stakeholder and the the development team, facilitating communication and guiding the product’s development according to the defined vision and roadmap.
Skills:
Business skills are:
- Ability to imagine and pursue innovative ideas (visionary)
- A deep understang of the industry
- Ability to adapt to changes, flexible mindset
Technical skills are:
- Confident to make decisions about the product
- Ability to discuss with developers and understand their choices
People skills are:
- Excellent communication skills
- Ability to motivate people
- Ability to build good relationships with stakeholders
- Ability to collaborate with the Scrum Master and Development team
PO vs. PM
Large companies tend to have more than one Product Owner. In this case, a Product Manager, aka Chief Product Owner, takes the responsibility of aligning all product owners with the overall strategy.
What are the responsibilities of a Product Owner?
Product Discovery
- Product Discovery is an ongoing process, involving continuous assessment and adaptation based on the evolving requirements of the customer.
- The product owner (PO) discusses the product strategy with the customer and shares it with the stakeholders and the development team.
- The PO performs interviews with potential users, meets with stakeholders, hosts workshops with current users, etc. to collect or refine requirement.
- The PO listens to the users’ pain points to identify opportunities for improving the product.
Product Implementation
- Throughout implementation, the PO should be available to respond to the Development team’s questions and concerns.
- The PO maintains the product backlog by continuously refining and prioritizing its items.
- The PO collaborates with the Development team to define and implement the product releases.
- The PO participates in the sprint planning events by defining sprint goals, top priorities, and acceptance criteria.
- The PO evaluates the work done by the Development team and provides feedback during the sprint review events.
What is the broad definition of a Scrum Master?
The Scrum Master is responsible for facilitating the Scrum process and ensuring that the Scrum team adheres to its principles and practices.
They serve as a servant-leader, coaching the team on the Agile mindset, removing impediments to progress, and fostering a collaborative and self-organizing environment.
Skills:
Soft Skills:
- Has the ability to build good relationships with the development team
- Employ emotional intelligence to build trust and confidence
- Active listening and support to the development team
Technical Skills:
- Very knowledgeable about Agile Mindset and Scrum Practices.
- Has the ability to coach the Development Team
Scrum Master vs. Project Manager
While both roles consist of managing projects, the Scrum Master focuses on facilitating the Scrum process and empowering the team, while the traditional Project Manager follows a more structured approach with detailed planning and direct oversight of the project.
In Scrum, most of the responsibilities traditionally held by a Product Manager are divided between the Scrum Master (Facilitator, Mentor, Servant Leader) and the Product Owner (Decision Maker, Controller, Situational Leader).
What does Servant Leadership mean to you?
It is a leadership style where the leader’s primary focus is on serving and empowering their team members.
The leader strives to create a supportive and collaborative environment where development team members feel valued and motivated.
- Encouraging the team to improve their skills and performance
- Removing any impediments the team might face
- Prompting well-being within the project
What are the main Responsibilites of a Scrum Master?
Scrum Champion
The Scrum Master helps the Scrum team and the organization follow Agile values and Scrum practices.
Empower the Team
The Scrum Master empowers the team to make decisions collectively and take ownership of their work.
Mediating Conflicts
In cases of disagreement, the Scrum Master acts as a neutral mediator, helping the team find common ground.
Encourage Openness
The Scrum Master fosters an environment where team members feel comfortable expressing their ideas, concerns and opinions.
Encourage Learning
The Scrum Master fosters a culture of continous learning to help the team enhance their competencies and performance.
Facilitate Consensus
The Scrum Master facilitates collaborative discussions by ensuring that all voices are heard and considered.
Protect the Team
The Scrum Master helps the team stay focused by shielding them from external distractions.
Remove Impediments
The Scrum Master protects the Dev team from progress impediments, both reactively and proactively
What is a cross-functional team?
A cross-functional team is made of members with diverse substantial skill sets, making it possible to produce the project deliverables with no external dependency. The team is fully capable to develop the product from Analysis to Production. That means the team has BA’s, Developers, UX-designers, testers and integrators.
Having to throw a partially finished product to another team for whatever reason, creates queues, delays, technical debt, no understanding and lacking a feeling of responsibility.
What are T-shaped and I-shaped team members?
A T-shaped team member is a generalizing specialist who has one or multiple skills with deep expertise in a particular field while other skills tend to be rather on a basic level. T-shaped people are usually more willing to collaborate.
An I-shaped team member has deep specialization and expertise in one domain and has no or little interest in participating or getting involved in work outside of that domain.
What does baselining mean? How is it important for you personally and how for the team?
Baselining helps you to describe the status quo, before you committ to an intervention. After the intervention you can check if the intervention was successfull. It can be a personal intervention or it can be an agile experiment.
- Pre-Training assessment: represents a baseline of where the team stands before receiving the intended training.
- Mid-Training assessment: is optional, but it allows to make any adjustments if needed.
- Post-Training assessment: reveals the efficiency of the training by comparing its results to the pre-training one.
