Scrum Development Blog

Better teams make better products.

Certified Scrum Professional

News, Scrum Terms | Posted by The 3Back Team
Mar 24 2010

certified scrum professionalThe Scrum Alliance has updated their program for Scrum. The designation of Certified Scrum Practicing has been changed to Certified Scrum Professional (CSP). The main reason for this change has been to improve the brand and image recognition. This marks a good step forward with a focus on the CSP designation being the real deal. Take a CSD, CSM or CSPO course forms a simple pathways to recognized expertise in applied scrum. The real deal is the CSP which is now a year practicing scrum, a writeup of your experience and defense of your work.

Another interesting observation about this move is the use of the 3 letter abbreviation does not need to change. Which helps with branding and those in the CSP community. Many use the 3 letters to brand themselves on resumes, titles, etc. so the switch is less painful.

Raising bar on agile / scrum expertise is a good step for our community and we are excited to see this move by the Scrum Alliance.

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Agile’s Big Rule

Agile Pathways | Posted by The 3Back Team
Mar 17 2010

The team will adapt it’s process and  improve their ability to deliver quality product within organizational constraints.

All good agile processes follow Agile’s Big Rule and are targeted at creating and sustaining well formed teams. A good agile process contains both the seed of it’s own evaluation and the seed for the product’s evaluation.  This forms a double feedback loop. Both loops are owned and managed by the team. The team is the fundamental unit in an agile organization.  Therefore the process cannot be too big otherwise the team cannot adequately focus on the needs of the product or it’s development effort. Agile process are characterized as light weight and not large mind consuming systematized thought models

The following list of process would qualify..

  • Scrum
  • FDD
  • Kanban
  • Lean
  • Agile (some methods called Agile that others have built, often proprietary)
  • Crystal

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Make It Visible

Scrum Terms | Posted by The 3Back Team
Mar 17 2010

make it visibleOne of a core set of agile thinking patterns is Make it Visible. 70% of the processing power between our ears handles and deals with processing of visual information. For people generally, we will know where to apply energy to something when there is sufficient visibility on a task or work item. Self organization can occur when the work has enough visibility so that we know what to do without being told. So when you do not see someone moving or taking action it is usually because there is lack of visibility and my first assumption is that the person is simple confused on how to engage. Look to make things visible to the person rather than telling them what to do. Assume they want to help but, simply do not know where to apply energy. Make it Visible applies as a pattern to setting up and sustaining well formed agile team.

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Team Swarm

Scrum Terms | Posted by The 3Back Team
Mar 11 2010

Team swarm is an observable pattern of cohesive team work. The word swarm is the right word because to an outside (outside: someone not directlyteam swarm scrum on the team doing the work) observer the pattern almost looks random. However, to those on the team they are moving with intent and purpose even though the observer cannot easily discern why they are focused the way they are.

Well formed teams will exhibit a team swarm pattern after they mature. A good sign of your team maturing is that they tend to swarm and jump on work together and often one story at a time. This is an observable point of view that the Scrum Master can use to detect when his/her team is starting to work well together. To an untrained observer this will be a sign of chaos and the tendency is for them to step in and clean up mess “who’s in charge here anyway” or “this needs to be tidy’ed up”. These types of management practices are anathema to a good agile scrum team and interfere with it’s ability to self organize.

The pattern of team swarm is generally observed for teams when strong task orientation is present. Scrum teams are often working on software development problems that require a team head to work through. The Product Owner, in scrum, provides the direction or line of purpose for the team.

Great project management recognizes team swarm and is good at stimulating the environment to encourage small team tactical behaviors. A competent agile project manager will not usurp the teams work pattern to fulfill a desire to know what is happening. This means that reporting of work done on the agile team is incumbent on the team members to make it visible. Therefore a great leader charges the team with the constraint to both make it visible internally so that common task orientation and make it visible externally so that reporting/decision making can be supported.

The team swarm pattern is critical to decision making. Tactical agility (team level agility) can result when the work is visible and an emergent adaption can occur. Externally there is a need to supply concrete realities the team encounters to inform and enable strategic agility. Again this informs decision making both internal and external to the team. A trained agile project manager will know how to stimulate team behaviors without compromising the team’s need to self organize and simultaneously feed that information up the decision making apparatus of the organization so that strategic agility can happen. The result is a bidirectional flow of information. Team swarm is one way to know you are on the road to making that happen as smart as possible.

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Professional Scrum Training

Scrum Terms | Posted by The 3Back Team
Mar 11 2010

scrum team goldThere are a number of organizations out there offering Professional Scrum Training. Most of them are part of the Scrum Alliance which maintains a strict set  training practices and quality standards. However, there are many who are starting to offer their own certification and special class of designations because of money or because they could not tolerate guidelines they did not personally control.

Scrum is a open development methodology founded by a team and has a long history of being team based in it’s origins. There are some very strong writers who have popularized Scrum and are well known for their work, writing and contributions.  More later on the founding history of Scrum….

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Code Viscosity

Scrum Terms | Posted by The 3Back Team
Mar 10 2010
Code Viscosity is generally referred to as  Technical Debt in software. The word viscous is a good metaphor because it describes something that would be hard to move through. We can describe the difficulty to move through code as viscous. Imagine swimming in syrup vs. water.
viscosity code technical debt
Deficiencies that show in code, development environments, and development practices.  Technical debt generally makes the code hard to change. Typically, this includes bad design, poorly written code, poorly documented code, lack of a good unit testing framework and/or set of practices, bad configuration management, and so on. (see Quality Code)

Technical Debt Deficiencies in the code, development environments, and development practices, which makes the code hard to change. Typically, this includes bad design, poorly written code, poorly documented code, lack of a good unit testing framework and/or set of practices, bad configuration management, and so on. (see Quality Code)

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Scrum Air Force

News | Posted by The 3Back Team
Mar 05 2010

The scrum development air force is coming to Orlando for the March 2010 Scrum Gathering.

Effective Agile Dev LLC and 3Back LLC are  excited to be at this years Scrum Alliance Scrum Gathering in Orlando.

scrum airforceeffective agile development air force scrum

Are you going? Then sign below in the comment  section.

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Agile Earned Value Metrics

Scrum Terms | Posted by The 3Back Team
Mar 04 2010

For agile teams, earned value metrics is simple a way to measure and monitor an agile team. As long as the metrics are not used to drive performance but, instead used to understand throughput they can be a powerful aid.  We will call this Agile Earned Value Metrics (AgileEVM).

In scrum or agile, we typically have a story as the fundamental unit of work being asked for. A team will then work on this request toscrum team value metrics monitor project complete the story. Stories are used to drive team work. With stories (chunks of work) we typically see a notion of story points for each story (story points is a relative sizing mechanism used to compare one story to another and gain an understanding of size over many small bites of work). Each story has a sharp definition of done or exit criteria that can be assessed for completion. Stories are shaped and written by analysis and through practice will tend to become roughly the same size chunk of work overtime. With story points we can form a stable baseline for understanding earned value metrics.

Our approach will be to understand our effort by using AgileEVM implementation according to the product backlog at hand and the demonstrable skill of the team. It is the demonstrable part that hinges EVM to an agile effort. Demo or demonstrably done in Scrum is formally called called Sprint Review in modern scrum. With a focus on stories we have AgileEVM. Note Value: is now anchored as a foundational concept by focusing on satisfying the request from an outside the team source (requests in agile projects are stories). By being fairly small or bitable chunks of work we have something that is granular enough to measure and allow us to pursue answers to the questions the business cares about.

  • Am I getting what I paid for?
  • Am I getting it as fast as I expected?
  • How much value am I getting?

With the patterns of stories and story points we can setup and make use of the concepts of Earned Business Value. In Scrum, the Scrum Master or Agile Project Manager would be key to getting this setup and monitored so that we can inform decision making.

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Certified Professional Scrum Developer

News | Posted by The 3Back Team
Feb 28 2010

Certified Scrum DeveloperA Certified Scrum Developer or Professional Developer is a designation recognized by the Scrum Alliance. This program was developed to address the needs of the modern software developer in scrum. The Certified Scrum Developer (CSD) is a designation that carries focuses on key learning objectives and is part of a Scrum Developer Training curriculum.

•  Use emergent architecture to avoid technical debt
•  Use Test Driven Development as a design tool
•  Setup and leverage continuous integration
•  Use Test Impact Analysis to decrease testing times
•  Manage SQL Server development in an Agile way
•  Use .NET and T-SQL refactoring effectively
•  Build, deploy, and test SQL Server databases
•  Create and manage test plans and cases
•  Create, run, record, and play back manual tests
•  Setup a branching strategy and branch code
•  Write more maintainable code
•  Identify and eliminate people and process dysfunctions
•  Inspect and improve your team’s software development process
•  Form effective teams
•  Explore and understand legacy “Brownfield” architecture
•  Define quality attributes, acceptance criteria, and “done”
•  Create automated builds
•  How to handle software hotfixes
•  Verify that bugs are identified and eliminated
•  Plan releases and sprints
•  Estimate product backlog items
•  Create and manage a sprint backlog
•  Hold an effective sprint review
•  Improve your process by using retrospectives
•  Use emergent architecture to avoid technical debt
•  Use Test Driven Development as a design tool
•  Setup and leverage continuous integration
•  Use Test Impact Analysis to decrease testing times
•  Manage SQL Server development in an Agile way
•  Use .NET and T-SQL refactoring effectively
•  Build, deploy, and test SQL Server databases
•  Create and manage test plans and cases
•  Create, run, record, and play back manual tests
•  Setup a branching strategy and branch code
•  Write more maintainable code
•  Identify and eliminate people and process dysfunctions
•  Inspect and improve your team’s software development process


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Team Fragmentation

Scrum Terms | Posted by The 3Back Team
Feb 27 2010

Team fragmentation occurs when there is a lack of unifying purpose in product development work. For simple groups this is often referred to as task orientation. Since the word task is so heavily loaded in agile project management or an any agile / scrum team our industry commonly uses team fragmentation.

In agile distributed teams can easily become fragmented from lack of task orientation. For a distributed scrum agile teamscrum team fragmentation this can be very challenging. Most organizations are faced with the reality of distributed team work in the form of offshore or nearshore typically done as outsourcing.

  • How do you manage these teams?
  • How do you bring new team up to speed?
  • What tools do we use?
  • How do you juggle time zones?
  • Language barriers?
  • Cultural barriers?
  • How do you form effective team habits and without getting blinded by process fog?

Successfully developing a product with a distributed agile team is a modern day challenge most companies.  For the 3back team this topic is one of our favorite.

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