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Tag: scrum certification

What is the Best Way to Train Agility?

Posted on by Imarticus Learning
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Agile methodologies are becoming increasingly popular around the world today. Most large companies incorporate these principles in their work settings, owing to the many benefits that they bring to the table. However, in order to ensure that the organizations function as one in a seamless manner, it is important to help everyone be on the same page about Agile methodologies.

If you are learning Agile on your own, you need to understand what the methodology entails in order to carry out the job effectively. The best way to train agility would be to develop a training plan, which is comprehensive enough to have a long term impact on the organization. Here are the steps to build a training plan that will transform your organization.

  • Training Goals

First, you should set a goal as to what you are trying to reach by learning this. Are you only looking for a basic understanding of Agile and Scrum? Are you looking to make yourself a Scrum Master or lead a coaching team? Or are you simply trying to be the Agile leader every organization needs in order to guide the others towards an Agile system? All of these can be possible goals for your actions. Once you have this sorted out, you can move onto the next part of the plan.

  • Audience

Obviously, the overarching end goal is to transform everyone who works at the organization into Agile practitioners. However, it is not feasible to train everyone right at the start. The better way to do it would be to train a single person like yourself or a small group who will be able to start implementing the methodologies at the workplace. Know that the training experience for the Agile practitioner, leader and Scrum Master all different in their own ways too. This means that you will have to identify the target audience in this step in a clear manner.

  • Timeline

No training plan is complete without a rough timeline of what you are trying to achieve. You will have to draw up a high-level schedule, which can be difficult at first – however, it is necessary. Keep in mind your goals too, when you are setting up a timeline. It may be easy to train a single person as an Agile Pilot quickly, but transforming your organization completely may even take years – the timeline varies according to the goal you have in mind.

  • Scope and Expansion Plans

You should then have an idea about how you will move forth in making it an organization-wide practice. You should eventually expand the plan in mind to include everyone, and you must have an idea of whether you will use Stealth Agile or Organization wide agile training to that effect.

Choosing a vendor for training your organization is also an important part of the plan. You will need to have a high-quality vendor, who can teach Agile methodologies in a comprehensive manner – the agile business analysis course and other ones available in Imarticus Learning are just for you.

What is Scrum methodology?

Posted on by Imarticus Learning
Reading Time: 2 minutes

The Scrum world provides the Scrum DevTeam decision-making capabilities instead of detailing how and when to do it. Scrum trusts the team to self-organize the issue presented to it and resolve criteria like Task definitions, Entry and Exit criteria, Validation criteria etc instead. Scrum is a strategy for software product development helping software developers to work as collaborative teams for the achievement of common business goals like the creation of a market-ready product.

Scrum methodology:

The Scrum framework relies on its team to be collaborative, cross-functional, Scrum organized and task-oriented. Every member of the team participates and contributes to goal realization for the desired outcome under the guidance of an Agile coach to resolve complexities and deliver on time.

As there are no leaders the team Manager is the Product Owner and is able to fully utilize capabilities when taking the idea from concept to a sellable product. It is definitely all about the team effort and each Sprint meeting helps prioritize the Product Owner needs and address issues based on them by team-effort that is both communicative and collaborative.

Scrum Development:

Scrum methodology encourages team planning at the beginning where the team decides on which items they will commit to creating in a sprint product backlog. Agile Scrum sprints then take the issues featured from coding to functionality and test to integrate its focus towards the evolving goal.

By sharing, communicating and collaborating in each Sprint, the product becomes flexible, defect-free, tested and emerges as a market-ready product during the project life-cycle itself. The daily Sprint reviews in a Scrum meet of about 15-minutes enables effective review, corrections, and transitions based on the progress achieved the previous day. The Scrum master is the coordinator who with a scrum certification course ensures team participation and goal focus.

Here is how a task is performed in Scrum.

  • The Scrum DevTeam collaborates to resolve complex issues.
  • The product backlog is discussed by the team to prioritize Product Owner needs and fixes deadlines for committing to produce a market-ready product resolution.
  • Each time-restricted Sprint is reviewed in daily Scrums of not more than 15 minutes.
  • Each daily Scrum reviews tests and corrects the previous day’s progress.
  • On completion of a sellable product, a new Sprint begins.
  • The process continues till the deadlines or budget is complete.

The Scrum process artifacts:

At the end of a Scrum sprint, the team as one delivers the primary product or artifact which should be sellable.
The product backlog artifact lists the functionalities, time chart, and features required to enhance the primary artifact.

The Product Owner’s onus of working the backlog allows the team to work the most value-based feature first. The Scrum Master ensures user stories or client perspectives serve as the basis of product development during Sprint reviews and backlog creation.

The Agile  Scrum methodology creates by team efforts, artifacts like the burndown sprint chart and a release chart listing work accomplished, tested and corrected to ensure timely delivery of a market-ready product.

Main Roles in Scrum methodology:

The Scrum framework works on three roles.

  • The Scrum Team who work in Sprints to produce market-ready products.
  • The Scrum Master ensures the team uses Scrum Agile practices.
  • The (PO)Product Owner or client prioritizes the backlog, manages and coordinates the team efforts.

Wrapping it up the scrum methodology is akin to winning in a car race where the interlocking roles of the driver being the PO, the mechanic being the Scrum Master, the team is responsible for winning the race in a sellable product the race car.

What Does a Scrum Master Do?

Posted on by Imarticus Learning
Reading Time: 2 minutes

The Scrum framework treats the scrum master role as a person with scrum master certification and hence an important coach of Scrum values. While without actual authority, the person in this role has to lead by example and influence the team using the servant-leader example. So powerful is the effect of the Scrum Master role that the role is also known and called as Team Coach, Agile Manager or Coach and iterative Coach or Manager.

Role of a Scrum Master
The team member responsible for implementing Agile principles, values, practices, and processes that the team follows and lives by, is denoted as the Scrum Master.

The Scrum Master is responsible for

  • Protecting team members from external distractions and interruptions.
  • Removal of team obstacles.
  • Ensuring team-dynamics and effectiveness.
  • Establishing excellent relationships between the product owner and team both inter and intra team.

Benefits of having a Scrum Master
The Scrum Master is an ace in the use of Scrum and Agile values having excellent command over team dynamics and able to provide a self-organized team who can use the Agile and Scrum practices to resolve their situations and achieve ongoing team communication and collaboration.

The team’s Scrum Master also has the onus of addressing any obstacles, distractions, disruptions etc. to ensure the team members can concentrate on output and production without any hindrances.

Also, present-day teams comprise of team members who are all experts in their own fields. There needs to be a binding agent and cushion for the team to achieve transparent communication leading to effective collaboration. That role is for the Scrum Master to effectively fulfill.

Common Scrum leadership issues 
With the benefits come to the drawbacks. Ineffective role appreciation of the Scrum Master can lead to hindrances that may include:

  • The assumption that project managers without an agile business analysis course can be effective Scrum Masters.  Most often the failure is in the leadership being a control with commands style very different from the servant-master role envisaged in Scrum practices.
  • Donning the role of Scrum Master without prior experience in prior Agile environs.
  • Expectations of performance and workloads from the Scrum Master with all teams. This fails the premise that teams new to Agile practices and principles perform just as well as the experienced teams. An experienced team needs far less Scrum Master inputs when compared to new teams who have to achieve an effective level of communication and collaboration in Agile roles, practices, and principles.

Scrum Master role-apportioning
There Scrum Framework does not define by skills the levels of mastery in Scrum practices. However, practically the following levels can be adapted based on experience levels.

  • Rotational scrum master: Team members accept scrum master administrative responsibilities on a rotational basis in a lap-by-lap style.
  • Partial scrum master: Where one team member also accepts the scrum master roles along with other team responsibilities.
  • Dedicated full-time scrum master: Teams learning Agile prefer to have one team member designated with the scrum master responsibility for a specified time.
  • Dedicated full-time scrum master with multiple teams: Is a realistic model of a single full-time Scrum Master working with different teams.
  • Agile Coach: This role envisages interventions on a need-basis and works across teams without any restrictions to an assigned team only.

Conclusion:
The Scrum Master is vital to the teams effective functioning. Through effective team management and implementation of Scrum values efficiency, productivity and desired outcomes are achievable.