Similarities in cycling and practicing Scrum.

I remember when I first tried riding a bicycle. It was my elder brother’s red colored bicycle. Its color always fascinated me. One day I requested him to allow me to take its ride. First he had a hitch to allow me as he was worried of three things,

•         What if I fell down and get hurt?
•       What if I get hurt and blame goes to him? (For kids this is the most critical moment to face the parentsJ…forget about the wounds!)
•         What if his bicycle gets damage?

But later when I repeatedly requested him, he agreed with barter of some portion of my pocket money and we planned that on next weekend we would go to nearby ground where he will help me to learn riding bicycle.

The D-day came and my elder brother gave me a few instructions such as, how to make balance on bicycle, how to apply brakes, …etc. He kept running behind the bicycle and hold it to prevent me falling down and help me keeping balance while I was riding and after a few such attempts, I learned balancing bicycle!

No lengthy procedures, no lot of rules (I am not referring the traffic rules), no instruction-booklets. It was simple. My brother was my guide, a few rules of cycling as balancing, applying brakes, driving on right side of the ground (road). That’s it!

Why I mentioned it here? Reason is – Practising Scrum is same as riding a bike. No lengthy procedures, no lot of rules, no heavy documentation. If you will keep on planning, you are only going to delay learning Scrum. You need to put Scrum in practice.

The only things needed are:

• A determination for adapting scrum
• Understanding a very few ceremonies (Sprint planning, Backlog refinement, Daily Scrum, Sprint review, Scrum Retrospective)
• Yes, there is a need of one scrum coach during initial weeks and voila! You are scrummified, your team is scrummified.

So what you are waiting for? Go get scrummified.

Hold on Scrum Players, Your Team Still Needs Clarity on Some Game Rules!

Different opinions among Scrum followers sometimes create points of discussion. Recently one such point was, "Who can terminate a sprint?" There were three different opinions, covering all three roles in Scrum (ScrumMaster, product owner, development team). Below are excerpts from Scrum experts that give us insight into the different answers to this question.

In Agile Project Management with Scrum, Ken Schwaber says, "If the Sprint proves to be not viable, the ScrumMaster can abnormally terminate the Sprint and initiate a new Sprint planning meeting to initiate the next Sprint. The ScrumMaster can make this change of his or her own accord or as requested by the Team or the Product Owner."

Kenneth Rubin, in Essential Scrum, writes, "Should the sprint goal become completely invalid, the Scrum team may decide that continuing with the current sprint makes no sense and advise the product owner to abnormally terminate the sprint."

And in Succeeding with Agile, Mike Cohn writes, "Let's consider the case of the product owner discovering some important new requirement that she says needs to be done instead of the work the team is engaged in. Sometimes this will happen. When it does I suggest making the change in sprint goal visible. Scrum does this by having the team announce an abnormal termination to the sprint . . . "

What I want to make clear here, as is made clear in the quotes above, is the importance of context. Without understanding the context of the situation, one should not get carried away with one's own opinion. One must consider the scenario leading to the termination of the sprint. Though sprint termination is rare, sometimes compelling reasons indicate its need. Whatever the case is, due to transparency in Scrum practices, reasons will be visible to all. The Scrum team has to act according to the situation. Sprint termination is not a decision taken without the consensus of the team, and the Scrum team is comprised of all three roles: product owner + ScrumMaster + development team.

Originally published at: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2015/february/hold-on-scrum-players-your-team-still-need-clarity