The Story Behind “Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions” - Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company | Part 5
31 March 2019
Agile Workflows
The Story Behind Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company
Scott M. Graffius, CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™, helps companies achieve their strategic objectives and business initiatives through project management leadership. A fantastic agile transformation outcome with a client organization in the entertainment industry was the inspiration for Scott's award-winning book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. This is the story behind the book—told by Scott. Identifying details have been changed and certain elements are not included.
This article is the fifth installment of the eight-part story. If you haven't already read the earlier parts, you can find them here:
Part 5: The Pilot – Vision, Roadmap and Release Plan, and Product Backlog
We advanced to the pilot—which included doing many things differently. Examples follow.
The Product Owner and I discussed techniques on developing a product vision statement. He opted to use the template attributed to Geoffrey Moore. The Product Owner created a draft of the vision and sent it with a request for feedback to the stakeholders. After receiving feedback, the Product Owner revised and finalized the product vision. He wrote the statement on oversize paper and posted it in a prominent location where the Scrum Team (Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team) and stakeholders could easily see it.
The Product Owner and I then discussed techniques on creating and maintaining a product roadmap/release plan. He opted for a simple table with four rows and four columns. The rows included:
- Name (the title of the product or major release),
- Goal (the reason for creating it),
- Features (a high-level list of features), and
- Estimated number of sprints.
For the columns, there was one for each quarter of the year. Similar to what was done with the product vision, the Product Owner sent the plan with a request for feedback to the stakeholders. After receiving feedback, the Product Owner revised and the plan, wrote it on oversize paper, and posted it next to the product vision statement.
Aspects of team formation were covered already. The new Scrum team totaled 11 people. All were co-located and 100% allocated to the project.
The Product Owner and I discussed techniques on developing and maintaining the product backlog. He opted to employ a simple table format with six columns:
- ID#,
- User story/description,
- Category (he decided on four types: feature, bug, technical debt, and other),
- Story point estimate for complexity,
- Priority based on business value, and
- Status.
To help with user stories, the Product Owner often referenced the INVEST (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable) model developed by Bill Wake. For priority, the Product Owner initially used the MoSCoW method (Must have, Should have, Could have, or Won't have). Later, the Product Owner found the business value/risk method (where each item is rated as high or low in two dimensions—business value and risk, ...) to be the most beneficial, and the Product Owner continues to use that approach today. In a session facilitated by the Scrum Master, the Product Owner presented the user stories to the Development Team, and participants provided story points (using physical cards for the exercise) for estimates of complexity of each item. Later, the team tried t-shirt sizing (S, M, L, and XL designations) for estimates of complexity, but they decided to return to story points.
Previously, sprints were four weeks in length. Now the team was using the shorter duration of two weeks. A key benefit was that the Scrum value of focus was improved.
The Story Behind Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions — Agile Transformation at an Entertainment Company continues with Part 6: The Pilot — Sprint Planning and Sprint Execution.
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive.
There are a variety of frameworks supporting the development of products and services, and most approaches fall into one of two broad categories: traditional or agile. Traditional practices such as waterfall engage sequential development, while agile involves iterative and incremental deliverables. Organizations are increasingly embracing agile to manage projects, and best meet their business needs of rapid response to change, fast delivery speed, and more.
With clear and easy to follow step-by-step instructions, Scott M. Graffius's award-winning Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions helps the reader:
- Implement and use the most popular agile framework―Scrum;
- Deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement; and
- Support innovation and drive competitive advantage.
Hailed by Literary Titan as “the book highlights the versatility of Scrum beautifully.”
Winner of 17 first place awards.
Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is available in paperback and ebook/Kindle worldwide. Some links by country follow.
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