Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™
“Agile Scrum: An Overview (Originally) for The Board of Directors of an Entertainment Company” Talk at PMICIE
25 July 2018
Agile Workflows
There's a widely-held view that agile development is new. But agile was used decades before it became well-known. For example, software was developed in half-day iterations in 1958 for Project Mercury, the United States' first human spaceflight program. And Harlan Mills of IBM promoted in 1968 that "software development should be done incrementally, in stages with continuous user participation and replanning."
Many innovators and visionaries have advanced agile—which includes Scrum—principles and practices over time. Agile Has a Long and Colorful Heritage: A Timeline Infographic from Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™ illustrates via specific examples how agile has progressively evolved. The downloadable infographic is located here.
About Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
A fantastic agile transformation experience and result with a client organization in the entertainment industry was the inspiration for Scott M. Graffius’ book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. The publication helps technical and non-technical teams develop and deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, continuous improvement, and more. It has garnered several first place awards. A trailer, high-resolution images, reviews, and a detailed list of awards are in the digital media kit. Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is offered in digital and print formats.
The ebook (ASIN: B01FZ0JIIY) is available in:
- Australia,
- Brazil,
- Canada,
- France,
- Germany,
- India,
- Italy,
- Japan,
- Mexico,
- the Netherlands,
- Spain,
- the United Kingdom, and
- the United States.
The paperback (ISBN-13: 9781533370242) is for sale at:
- Amazon,
- Barnes & Noble,
- Strand Books,
- Harvard Book Store,
- Books-a-Million,
- The Booksmith,
- Hudson Booksellers,
- Savoy Bookshop & Café,
- Compass Books at SFO/Books Inc.,
- Books & Books - Miami,
- University Press Books - Berkeley,
- and other retailers and partners in the United States and around the world.
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2018 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Planning Cards Help Agile Teams Estimate Work
11 January 2018
Agile Workflows
🔥 Update: The limited-edition product sold out!
Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™ has Planning Cards as a tool to help agile teams estimate work. Excerpts of the information and instructions—which are included with each deck of the cards—follow. This article is for those interested in getting an overview.
About These Planning Cards
- These cards are used to help estimate work
- Each deck contains four sets of cards—enough for four estimators
- Each of the four sets has a unique color on the front side of cards—it’s in either blue, green, orange, or yellow
- Cards are based on the Fibonacci sequence, where every number after the first two is the sum of the two preceding numbers
- Each set includes cards with the following values: 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, and "?"
- Each deck comes in a storage case
Purpose
These cards and instructions support the most popular approach to estimating work in Scrum projects—estimating the complexity of work via story points.
The Development Team—which may be comprised of business analysts, coders, testers, etc.—collaboratively estimates each item in the product backlog in story points. Story points are a relative measure of complexity.
Participants
- Product Owner
- Development Team
- Scrum Master (facilitator/observer)
Frequency
- Once or twice per sprint
Time-box
- One hour for each week of the sprint
- It’s a common practice to limit each meeting to one hour and have multiple meetings as appropriate
Prerequisites/Inputs
- Product backlog containing user stories, bugs, and other requirements
- One set of planning cards for each member of the Development Team
Suggested Steps
1. If each member of the Development Team does not already have their own set of planning cards, the Scrum Master provides materials as needed
2. The Product Owner describes an item (a user story, bug, or other requirement) from the product backlog and mentions its intent and business value
3. Each member of the Development Team silently picks a card best representing their assessment of the complexity of the work and places the card face-down
4. After all of the Development Team members have made their selections, the cards are turned face-up, and the values are read aloud
5. If all of the selections have the same value, the Product Owner records it as the estimate, and that completes the exercise for the item; otherwise, proceed to the next step
6. Team member(s) who gave an outlier value —such as someone who gave a high value and/or someone who gave a low value—explain their reasoning
7. After a brief discussion, the team may take the most common value (the mode average) as the estimate or they may play another round of this planning game (steps 3-7)
8. Steps 2-7 are repeated until each item in the product backlog has been estimated
9. The Product Owner updates the product backlog with the estimate values
Options
Some organizations use a subset of the cards and slice product backlog items when the estimate is "too large." Here's an example:
- Development Team uses cards with the following values: 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and 21
- Predetermined that 21 is "too large"
- If a product backlog item is estimated at 21, it is sliced into two or more parts in collaboration with the Product Owner, and the resulting smaller items are estimated by the Development Team
This article provided a quick overview of an aspect of estimation in agile projects. Further details—including more information on the Fibonacci sequence, and additional options—are provided in the book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions. Agile Scrum is available in paperback and ebook formats at Amazon. For additional information, visit AgileScrumGuide.com.
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2018 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.
Talk by Scott M. Graffius at Project Management Institute - California Central Valley Chapter on September 13, 2018
14 September 2018
Agile Workflows
Scott M. Graffius's Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions is featured in Dr. Harold Kerzner's newest book, Innovation Project Management: Methods, Case Studies, and Tools for Managing Innovation Projects.
The following content from Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions heads up the section on Agile Innovation (page 36) of Kerzner's book:
"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. Traditional development and delivery frameworks such as waterfall are often ineffective. In contrast, Scrum is a value-driven agile approach which incorporates adjustments based on regular and repeated customer and stakeholder feedback. And Scrum's built-in rapid response to change leads to substantial benefits such as fast time-to-market, higher satisfaction, and continuous improvement—which supports innovation and drives competitive advantage."
— Scott M. Graffius, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions
About Dr. Harold Kerzner
Harold Kerzner, Ph.D., is Senior Executive Director at the International Institute for Learning, Inc., a global learning solutions company that conducts training for leading corporations throughout the world. He is a globally recognized expert on project, program, and portfolio management, total quality management, and strategic planning. Dr. Kerzner is the author of bestselling books and texts, including the acclaimed Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling, Tenth Edition. Innovation Project Management: Methods, Case Studies, and Tools for Managing Innovation Projects is his newest book.
For more information on Dr. Kerzner, visit his Wikipedia page.
About Innovation Project Management: Methods, Case Studies, and Tools for Managing Innovation Projects
The following includes content from the product description for the book.
Conventional project management methods are oftentimes insufficient for managing innovation projects. Innovation is lost under the pre-determined scope and forecasted environments of traditional project management. There is tremendous pressure on organizations to innovate, and the project managers responsible for managing these innovation projects do not have the training or tools to do their jobs effectively. Innovation Project Management provides the tools, insights, and metrics needed to successfully manage innovation projects—helping readers identify problems in their organization, conceive elegant solutions, and, when necessary, promote changes to their organizational culture.
There are several kinds of innovation—ranging from incremental changes to existing products to wholly original processes that emerge from market-disrupting new technology—that possess different characteristics and often require different tools. Best-selling author and project management expert Harold Kerzner integrates innovation, project management, and strategic planning to offer students and practicing professionals the essential tools and processes to analyze innovation from all sides. Innovation Project Management deconstructs traditional project management methods and explains why and how innovation projects should be managed differently. This invaluable resource:
- Provides practical advice and actionable tools for effectively managing innovation projects
- Offers value-based project management metrics and guidance on how to establish a metrics management program
- Shares exclusive insights from project managers at world-class organizations such as Airbus, Boeing, Hitachi, IBM, and Siemens on how they manage innovation projects
- Explores a variety of types of innovation including co-creation, value-driven, agile, open versus closed, and more
- Instructors have access to PowerPoint lecture slides by chapter through the book’s companion website
Innovation Project Management: Methods, Case Studies, and Tools for Managing Innovation Projects (ISBN-13: 9781119587293) is an essential text for professional project managers, corporate managers, innovation team members, as well as students in project management, innovation and entrepreneurship programs.
The book is available at Amazon and other retailers.
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius is a technology leader, project management expert, consultant, international speaker, and award-winning author.
Scott is a Principal Consultant and the CEO of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™, a professional services firm, where he helps clients strengthen their project management capabilities and realize their strategic objectives and business initiatives. The consultancy provides advisory, training, and facilitative consulting services related to project, program, portfolio, and PMO management. The firm’s expertise spans agile, traditional waterfall, and hybrid approaches. While every engagement is unique, outcomes typically include getting more projects done, faster delivery time, improved on-budget performance, improved customer and stakeholder satisfaction, and more. Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™ confidently backs its services with a Delighted Client Guarantee™.
A fantastic agile transformation experience and result with a client organization in the entertainment industry was the inspiration for Scott’s first book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions (ISBN-13: 9781533370242). It helps technical and non-technical teams develop and deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement—which supports innovation and drives competitive advantage. The book has garnered 17 first place awards from national and international competitions. Scott and Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions have been featured in Yahoo Finance, the Boston Herald, NBC WRAL, Informa, Innovation Management, the Dallas Business Journal, Computer Weekly, the PM World Journal, BookLife by Publisher’s Weekly, NHD Podcast, Learning Solutions, Harold Kerzner’s Innovation Project Management, and additional media outlets and publications. The trailer, high-resolution images, reviews, a list of awards, and more are available in the digital media kit for the book.
His second title, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change (ISBN-13: 9781072447962), was named one of the best Scrum books of all time by BookAuthority. The trailer, a list of awards, and more are presented at the book’s website.
Scott is a former vice president of project management with a publicly traded provider of diverse consumer products and services over the Internet. Before that, he ran and supervised the delivery of projects and programs in public and private organizations with businesses ranging from e-commerce to advanced technology products and services, retail, manufacturing, entertainment, and more. He has experience with consumer, business, reseller, government, and international markets, as well as experience spanning 20 countries.
Scott has a bachelor's degree in Psychology with a focus in Human Factors. He holds seven professional certifications: Certified Scrum Professional - ScrumMaster (CSP-SM), Certified Scrum Professional - Product Owner (CSP-PO), Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Project Management Professional (PMP), Lean Six Sigma Green Belt (LSSGB), and IT Service Management Foundation (ITIL). He is a member of the Scrum Alliance, the Project Management Institute, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Within the IEEE, Scott is a member of the Computer Society, the Consumer Electronics Society, the Broadcast Technology Society, the Internet of Things (IoT) Community, and the Consultants Network.
He has been actively involved with the Project Management Institute (PMI) in the development of professional standards. He was a member of the team which produced the Practice Standard for Work Breakdown Structures—Second Edition. Scott was a contributor and reviewer of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge—Sixth Edition, The Standard for Program Management—Fourth Edition, and The Practice Standard for Project Estimating—Second Edition (scheduled to be published in December 2019). He was also a subject matter expert reviewer of content for the PMI EMEA Congress 2019, and he is a member of the review team for the Scrum Alliance’s Global Scrum Gathering—New York City 2020.
Scott regularly speaks at conferences and other events around the globe where he delights audiences with presentations on agile, traditional, and hybrid project, program, portfolio, and PMO management. He integrates content on professional standards, best practices, and his first-hand experience with successful implementations. Scott uses everyday language and vibrant custom visuals to make complex topics clear and understandable, and he provides audiences with practical information they can use. Attendees have said “Scott is an amazing speaker,” “fantastic presentation,” and “highly recommended!” Appearances are listed at the public speaker section of his website.
Scott resides in Los Angeles, California.
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.
- 🇦🇺 Australia
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇨🇦 Canada
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic
- 🇩🇰 Denmark
- 🇫🇮 Finland
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇭🇺 Hungary
- 🇮🇳 India
- 🇮🇪 Ireland
- 🇮🇱 Israel
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇯🇵 Japan
- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand
- 🇳🇴 Norway
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🌏 More countries
Let's Connect
Connect with AgileScrumGuide.com on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
And connect with agile project management practitioner, consultant, award-winning author, and international speaker Scott M. Graffius on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
© Copyright 2019 Scott M. Graffius, AgileScrumGuide.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius/AgileScrumGuide.com.