52 Challenging Cases for Scrum Practitioners with Professional Scrum Master Training

The Scrum Framework is a lightweight framework to solve complex and adaptive problems with others. Although it looks easy on paper, it’s often much harder to do well in the messiness of the real world. Where do you make trade-offs? How can you model the Scrum values? How can you work empirically in an environment that isn’t suited for it?

To encourage Scrum practitioners to explore these questions during professional scrum master training at tryScrum, we created 52 real-life cases. These cases are inspired by our own experiences and those of the people we frequently work with. Use these cases for your community of Scrum Masters, as conversation starters in and around your Scrum Team, or put your own understanding of Scrum to the test. And no, there is no “right answer” :) The learning is not in knowing the answer, but in jointly deepening your understanding of the Scrum principles and values through reflection, dialogue, and putting new ideas into practice.

    

The deck is provided as a digital download with 52 cases for a small fee. We also have a free version available that includes 10 cases. In this blog post, we offer inspiration for when to use these cases and give suggestions for what Liberating Structures to try as conversation starters.

Example of the case: “What are good metrics?”

When to use the cases?

Finding a good opportunity to use the Scrum cases shouldn’t be too difficult. You can use them for individual reflection, within your Scrum Team, or the wider organization. Some specific examples to use the Scrum cases are:

During Sprint Retrospective. Share the Scrum cases before the Sprint Retrospective with your Scrum Team. Ask everyone to select the cases they think are the most interesting, relevant, or challenging. Identify the top-3 and bring those cases to the Sprint Retrospective to discuss in more detail.

    

For individual reflection. Select a Scrum case, get your own thinking started, and share your thoughts on LinkedIn. Most likely, it will trigger a conversation in which you can explore the case with other Scrum practitioners.

Within your Community of Practice. Many organizations have a Community of Practice in which participants share experiences and give & get help. Organize a session with the most relevant Scrum cases as a topic. Also, you can learn vast knowledge about product owner certification online.

As a conversation starter with management. Share the Scrum cases with management in your organization. Ask them to identify the most challenging cases or the one that raises the most questions. Simply have a one-on-one conversation with a manager about a specific case. Or host a workshop with more managers to discuss the cases.

During a public meetup. Make a specific Scrum case the topic for a public meetup. For example, your local Scrum user group. The wide variety of experiences will offer many different, fresh, and surprising perspectives.

For a job interview. Use the cases for any kind of Scrum related job interview. Prepare a couple of cases, ask the candidate to select the one (s)he considers the most interesting, challenging, or recognizable and simply have a conversation. By discussing the case you’ll get a good sense about the person’s understanding of the Scrum Framework.

Example of the case: “The technical Sprint Review”

How to use the cases?

We purposefully wrote each case in such a way that there is no clear “right” answer. Instead, there are different sides to each case, different arguments to make, and different solutions — some better than others. Just like the real world …

For the best learning experience, use Liberating Structures to structure the conversation. That way, everyone can offer their perspective. You may even find creative solutions to your own challenges!

 

Some examples of Liberating Structures to try are:

Conversation Cafe. We like to use Conversation Cafe to dig into cases like these. It encourages people to listen and understand each other’s perspectives on a profound, shared topic or challenge instead of trying to convince or persuade others to see it your way. Sitting in a circle with a simple set of agreements and a talking object, small groups engage in consecutive rounds of dialogue. Follow-up with 15% Solutions or 1–2–4-ALL to translate learnings from the case to your own team or environment.

1–2–4-ALL. Only doing a 1–2–4-ALL during a session is already a good approach to explore a case. Start with 1 minute of silent self-reflection. Take 2 minutes to generate ideas in pairs, building on ideas from self-reflection. Create groups of four and use 4 minutes to share and develop ideas that you’ve discussed within your pair. Notice similarities and differences. Take 5 minutes to share insights, ideas, and takeaways.

Impromptu Networking. With Impromptu Networking, you can discuss a case within 15 minutes. Invite the participants to stand up and form pairs. Present the case to discuss. Within the pairs, ask people to share their answers to the case. Signal the end of the first round and have people from new pairs. Within the new pairs, ask people to (again) share their answers. But also ask them to pay attention to similarities and differences from their previous conversation. Do one rounder. After the 3 rounds, gather insights and patterns that the participants noticed.

User Experience Fishbowl. The UX Fishbowl is ideally suited for unleashing the local wisdom of groups of any size. If within your team or organization people have experience (successes or failures) with a certain case, invite them to participate as the “inner circle” of the fishbowl. During the UX Fishbowl, the inner circle shares experiences while the outer circles listen. In alternating rounds, the outer circles generate questions they’d like to ask the inner circle. By focusing strongly on listening and asking questions about experiences, you can use UX Fishbowls to create an environment where people can learn together (rather than get solutions imposed on them).

Conversation Cafe in a workshop with Swisscom and KPN iTV. Conversation Cafe is a great Liberating Structure to explore the cases.

Discovery & Action Dialogue. “Discovery & Action Dialogue” (DAD) exists to help groups invent local solutions to the problems they face. Rather than giving up or immediately reaching to “best practices” that worked elsewhere, it helps groups carefully analyze the problem, potential solution, and how everyone can contribute to both. To use “Discovery & Action Dialogue”, select the most challenging case for your team or organization, download this worksheet, and discuss the questions in small groups.

Wicked Questions. Especially because there are no right answers, the Liberating Structure Wicked Questions is ideally suited to discuss the cases. The purpose of Wicked Questions is not to find a single answer, but to create transparency about seemingly paradoxical realities that exist side-by-side. By accepting both realities, you can engage in deeper strategic thinking and explore new possibilities for the “Wicked Cases” at hand.

              

Integrated Autonomy. Most of the challenges we face in the real world don’t have an easy answer. Different solutions can be true or happen at the same time. This is also reflected in the 52 Scrum Master cases where multiple answers might be true. When discussing the cases, it’s tempting to get stuck in either/or-thinking. But what would happen when we start thinking in terms of ‘and’ instead of ‘or’? What if we can find solutions that are helpful to both sides? Integrated Autonomy will help you adopt a more holistic view of the cases. Instead of steering the group in one direction of possible solutions, it actively invites them to uncover solutions that work across the field.

Wicked Questions combined with Discovery and Action Dialogue and Integrated Autonomy. A string we used during the Immersion Workshop in May 2019 in Amsterdam. The visualization is created by Thea Schukken.

Shift & Share. Especially in larger groups, Shift & Share is an ideal structure to discuss one or multiple cases. Prepare 4–6 stations with each a specific case. Ask the group to form small teams and to pick one station. At their station, the teams discuss the case and write feedback on the flip-over. After 10 minutes, the teams move clockwise to the next station. This is repeated until the teams have visited all stations. Discuss the key-takeaways with the group as a whole.

Improve Prototyping. The purpose of Improve Prototyping is to re-enact a challenging scenario (e.g. Scrum case) faced by a group or an individual and work together to devise different behavioral strategies and interventions by acting it out. The twist that this structure brings is that the person who introduced the scenario becomes the ‘director’, while the others become the ‘actors’. This allows the director to playfully experiment with strategies, behaviors, and interventions. As such, Improve Prototyping is ideally suited to explore the Scrum cases!

What, So What, Now What? ‘What, So What, Now What’ is a foundational Liberating Structures that helps by asking us to step back and consider what is going on. It structures our thinking by breaking our experience down into three steps: “What do we notice?”, “So, what does this mean?” and “Now, where do go from here?”. The flow of this Liberating Structure makes it ideally suited to reflect on the Scrum cases. Considering using 1–2–4-ALL to answer the questions. This prevents a group discussion and allows everyone to reflect and contribute.

Example of the case: “The part-time Scrum Master”

Closing words

In this blog post, we offered inspiration for when & how to use the 52 Scrum cases we created for the Scrum community. We hope it will trigger valuable conversations in and around your Scrum Team, improve your understanding of the Scrum Framework, and grow a stronger Scrum community. The 52 cases are available as a digital download for a small fee. We also have a free version available that includes 10 cases. Enjoy using them!

Want to learn more about Scrum and how to become a more effective Scrum Master? Join our on-site Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master II course or the online edition. We guarantee a unique, eye-opening experience that is 100% free of PowerPoint, highly interactive, and serious-but-fun. If you need help, feel free to join our user group ‘The Liberators Network’, which is all about learning and growing, together!

Resource: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/52-challenging-cases-scrum-practitioners

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Know Business Agility in the 21st Century by Certified Agile Coach Training

Since the Industrial Revolution, increased competition has led businesses to strategies that preserve and expand their market share. More than 100 years ago, Henry Ford revolutionized industrial productivity with his assembly line technology. Over time, countless others have improved, finding ways to adapt and forever change the ' status quo '.

This process of setting standards, eliminating bottlenecks and fine-tuning technologies to be repeated at scale has worked for a long time. The timing was right and the market was not as hungry for innovation as it is today. So we have to learn more about this by certified agile coach training at tryScrum.

Out with the old man

The market has outgrown the one-size-fits-all approach. Consumers have become increasingly aware of their needs and have demanded customized solutions. Once again, companies went back to the drawing board by finding ways to provide some level of customization and ensuring reasonable ROI's for their investors. Of course, this is another pattern: companies adapt to the needs of the market.

This innovative and adaptive cadence has been increasingly frequent - almost frantic. The 'magic formula' - finding patterns, establishing processes, hacking market demands and repeating on a large scale - has not worked the same way anymore.

When we delve into the reasons behind this loss of value, we find that companies are still trying to apply standards in places where there are no standards. The market is changing in ways that make scale repetition almost impossible.

The new definition of business agility

Some companies understood this early and adapted. Some - got it wrong - maintained the status quo and failed, while others are still in the business, but face strong competition from new market players (fintechs, startups, etc.) who are extremely consumer-oriented: listening to all their needs and quickly adapting as they add value to remain relevant.

This is the real meaning of business agility and ICP ACC agile coach certification, not any sophisticated or jargon-laden definitions.  Business agility is the efficient response to market changes. Basis of empiricism, where it is mandatory to be transparent to explore the demands and adapt accordingly.

In the midst of all this, the truth is irrefutable: it is impossible to sustain this level of adaptability without defining a new level of collaboration, where people not only perform tasks and follow the rules, but also maintain a clear vision of their goal and work to contribute to building value for the customer, innovating, collecting  feedback  and applying continuous improvements.

As business leaders in the current scenario, we must ask ourselves: “How can we enable an environment in which people can offer the best, that is, achieve business goals and redefine new ones, while maintaining a clear vision about creating value for consumers? ? ”, The answer varies for each company, but the focus on this resolution will lead you to a more agile business.

Regardless of the business your company does, the improvement will in fact happen with a profound cultural change, in which practice and learning go hand in hand and especially when people are encouraged to develop their skills that will change the game within this process of transformation.

Therefore, having a fruitful, fertile and facilitating environment with motivated and empowered individuals, is what will qualify your organization to be successful, allowing processes and systems to be optimized, more adaptable, intelligent, results-oriented and focused on customers. 

Resource: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/business-agility-21st-century

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4 Signs You Are Too Modern For Agile Coach Certification Online

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Ravi Verma uses satire as a way to emphasize how agile can help an organization by discussing ways that some of the organizations that he has been brought into are thinking and acting prior to really understanding what agile truly means. Ravi then takes a more serious view in each area with suggestions of how the Agile and Scrum Values can come into play and enable the organization to decide if this is right for them. International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile) is a community-driven organization that consists of pioneers, experts, and trusted advisors. ICAgile is a certification and accreditation body, not a training company. The ICP-ACC is one of two knowledge-based certifications on the Agile Coaching track. The certification focuses primarily on the mindset, roles, and responsibilities of an Agile Coach. After finishing the certification, the learner will be able to differentiate between and among mentoring, facilitating, professional coaching and teaching, and will also gain the skills needed to create a safe environment for meaningful collaboration and healthy conflict resolution within an agile team.

Know more: https://tryscrum.com/icagile/

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Understanding the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams in Professional Scrum Master Training

It’s been so exciting to hear so much positive feedback and interest in the new Scrum.org Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams and the accompanying Professional Scrum with Kanban class. Creating the class and guide together with Daniel (Vacanti) & Steve (Porter) and then working on getting it to market in a professional way (how else?) with the Scrum.org staff has been a great experience and a major focus area for me in the last couple of months.

As you might imagine, together with the interest come some questions about some choices we made in the design of the guide and the class. Several are emerging as the frequently asked ones. I wanted to tackle a couple of those in this post.

Where are some of the core Kanban practices?

The major one we’re getting comes from people who are experienced Kanban practitioners who notice that how we describe Kanban in the Kanban guide for scrum teams in professional scrum master training is different than the definition they’re familiar with. (Including my Kanban Primer for Scrum Teams blog post for example…) This isn’t an oversight. It’s by design. When we set out to create the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams/approach we had a specific context in mind. That context is teams using Scrum according to the Scrum guide, ideally professionally.

In the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams, we focus on helping in this context. These teams already have a collaborative inspect and adapt experimentation process together with a set of explicit feedback loops they’re using. So, we set out to define the minimal simplest set of Kanban practices that these Scrum teams would need to add in order to achieve steadier, healthier, more sustainable flow (I like to say it is like moving from a sprint that looks like a swamp to one that looks like a river).

After some discussion we decided that these practices actually complement what a professional Scrum team is already doing:

 

·    Visualization of the workflow

 

·    Limiting WIP

 

·    Active management of work items in progress

 

·    Inspecting and adapting their definition of "Workflow"

 

While we agree with the importance of “Improve Collaboratively (Using models and the scientific method” and “Implement feedback loops” we think they are redundant in a professional Scrum context.

Where are some advanced Kanban concepts like Classes of Service, Cost of Delay, Flow Efficiency?

They’re not part of the guide because we don’t consider them part of the “Minimally viable set of practices” a Scrum team should focus on when trying to improve their flow. Having said that, our guide and especially the PSK class provides people with some pointers towards advanced complementary Kanban/flow practices/metrics that at least some can use to continue their learning and improvement journey.

Beyond that - Some of them might be useful in some Scrum contexts, some less so.

Is this an application of the Kanban Method or not?

In my personal view, it is pretty close, as long as you assume professional scrum is your starting point. (see a blog post I wrote back in 2012 about this context). You are starting with the way the team uses Scrum and with respecting their current Scrum process & roles. You are obviously interested in pursuing an incremental evolutionary change to improve your performance and satisfaction with your process beyond what you’re currently achieving with Scrum. There is that argument that limiting your work in process is far from being an evolutionary change but rather a disruptive revolution. My personal take on it is that yes, limiting your work in process and moving to a disciplined pull mode is far from being easy, but it’s still evolutionary compared to changing team structures, roles, process flows. And in any case, this is an argument about the Kanban Method outside of a Scrum context as well. A professional Scrum team should actually have an easier time limiting WIP than most.

Is this ScrumBan?

Depends who you ask. Some people’s definition of ScrumBan is “A way to help teams’ transition from Scrum to Kanban”. This isn’t what we’re talking about here.

Another definition (that I subscribe to) is to see ScrumBan as a way to introduce Lean/Kanban flow into a Scrum context – while keeping the core Scrum process intact. This is pretty similar to our take on the process Scrum teams will typically take to get to an effective combination of Scrum and Kanban.

Finally, a variant on this definition is to see ScrumBan as simply the Scrum+Kanban combination itself, without worrying about your starting point and journey. This, in my view, is indeed what the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams describes.

Why/When should you add Kanban to Scrum?

The last question I want to tackle is one of the first you might want to think about. Essentially the question is “Why bother? Isn’t Scrum great as is?”

Most of the teams I’ve worked with since 2010 or so find Scrum+Kanban to be the ideal mix. I’ve helped Scrum teams achieve an even healthier smoother flow by adding Kanban to their process. I’ve helped Kanban teams accelerate their pace of improvement by adding cadence/rhythm and clarity. I’ve helped teams look beyond their Sprint at the end to end flow all the way from idea to outcomes using a Kanban system. I’ve helped organizations manage the flow across several Scrum teams using a Kanban system.

When a Scrum team wants my opinion on whether adding Kanban would be a good idea I typically ask them to think about how hard it is for them to Sprint and whether they feel like they have good flow during the Sprint. (And like I mentioned above - do they feel like their process is a swamp or a river). It’s as simple as that. I find most Scrum teams struggle to achieve good sustainable healthy flow and Kanban tends to help them with that.

When is Kanban with Scrum a bad idea?

Some Professional Scrum Trainers asked “When would it be a bad idea to introduce Kanban to your Scrum? What are some indicators that you should stop using Kanban as part of your Scrum?” I can’t think of any team where I thought they should stop using Kanban. If they understand Kanban and do it well, there’s really little that can go wrong. The problems start when they don’t understand Kanban or use it as an escape from the challenges of Scrum. Yes, Kanban can help you make your Scrum more sustainable and healthier, but please don’t add Kanban if you’re looking for an escape from the difficulties. Kanban done well adds discipline to your Scrum. Another bad time to introduce Kanban is when the team isn’t looking to improve. If things are working well or more importantly if the team perceives things as working well, they won’t have the energy needed to successfully add Kanban to their process. So make sure you agree on pains/motivations before you move forward to implementing something like Kanban.

Kanban - A way back to Scrum!

To finish with scenarios where introducing Kanban IS a great idea – It pains me every time I see a team/company using Scrum as a new variant of “project management command and control” focusing more on tasks, story points, velocity and burndown than on empiricism leveraging Done Increments of potentially releasable product.

What I’ve noticed is that introducing Kanban ideas helps these teams/companies finally understand what Scrum really is about and shed a lot of the unnecessary and even harmful baggage and instead refocus on the transparency, inspection, and adaptation brought to life by the core Scrum events, roles, and artifacts. Pretty amazing isn’t it?

Interested to learn more about how Kanban and Scrum make each other better together? Join a public Professional Scrum with Kanban class or request a private training for your team.

Resource: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/understanding-kanban-guide-scrum-teams 

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The Value of Scrum Certification Course Bangalore

What's the value of (Scrum) certifications? Is there any value? Why should you get certified? Is it even necessary?

Discussion

Definitely an interesting topic and when you start "googling" it, you'll stumble upon many yeses, no, yes, no, maybe debates.

For this blog, I'll be focusing on Scrum.org. So, let's take a step back again. What's the value of scrum certification course Bangalore? Is there any value? Why should you get certified?

I would say, it depends on your intentions. If your intention is only to get the Scrum certifications, then I'm sorry, there is no value there. Perhaps you should not even be doing it then Why? Because you're doing it for the wrong reasons!

Then what should be the reason?

But, if you're intrinsically motivated to help your organization become Agile by adopting Scrum, improving the profession of product delivery with Scrum and be an ambassador of change then yes, there is definitely value in getting yourself certified.

Knowing Scrum vs. Understanding Scrum

Every Scrum role, event, and artifact has an important purpose. What does empiricism truly mean? What's the power of bottom-up intelligence through self-organized cross-functional teams? How to use the Scrum Values as a compass? What's validate-learning? What do we mean by value? Know where you can bend the rules without breaking the principles. All of this, Scrum.org has a clear vision when it comes to the usage of Scrum. The fundamental distinction between knowing Scrum and understanding Scrum.

Scrum grew lighter and lighter. Less complete, less perfect in a way. Prescriptions, situational practices and techniques were gradually removed from the official definition of Scrum as it is documented in the Scrum Guide. Scrum turned into the framework that it was always designed to be. - Gunther Verheyen

Conclusion

Experience is not equal to knowledge. Having the knowledge doesn't always mean you understand it.

Scrum is a simple lightweight understandable framework, but extremely difficult to master.

Scrum.org training and exams (especially the advanced ones such as PSM III and PSPO II) consists of the case studies in essay format, where your in-depth understanding of the application and practices of Scrum (Scrum Master, Developer, Product Ownership, Scaling), the values and underlying principles in a variety of complex team and organizational situations are being challenged. In my opinion, a verification of this understanding is valuable!

It's clear that passing the exams doesn't make you an expert yet:

First, work on understanding Scrum. A training could be a great way to kickstart this process.

Once you have the proper understanding, you can start exploring Scrum to gain experience.

When you have the proper understanding and start applying Scrum in real life, you'll experience the challenges and highlights. Don't walk away from challenges, but face them! Eventually, knowledge will come.

So, what were your intentions when you decided to become Scrum certified?

Resource: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/value-scrum-certifications

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Why a Person Should Join tryScrum (Professional Agile Leadership Training)?

Some may confuse the word “Foundation” in the name of the Professional Scrum Foundation course to mean simple or basic. But in truth this means it is a course for everybody to build a solid base of knowledge, understanding and practical application of Professional Scrum.  

• Everyone in your Scrum team and the managers/leaders who interacting with your team should be able to answer
• What is complexity? How does professional agile leadership training framework help us develop and sustainable deliver complex products?
• What is empiricism? How do the Scrum Roles, Events, Artifacts enable and ensure this empirical process works?
• What is self-organisation? How does the Scrum framework help an organisation and its reams become self-organising?

Who should attend?

• Are you curious about what Scrum can bring to your products and organisation?
• Are you supporting Scrum Teams in a leadership role, stakeholder, or other capacity and want to understand how Scrum works and how to collaborate together?
• Are you interested in a career change and have no experience in Scrum?
• Are you doing Scrum in name only and nothing has changed? No mindset, culture, or increased agility change?
• Are you NOT delivering a “Done” Releasable Increment at least once per sprint, therefore enabling transparency, trust, and greater business agility?
• Are you NOT gaining better customer outcomes and business benefits?
• Is Scrum NOT helping you manage risk and complexity?

The Scrum Master Course Chennai is the perfect introduction, reboot or refresher to Scrum. This course is for organisations, teams or anyone wanting to experience the Scrum way of working. PSF provides the base knowledge needed for anyone interested in taking role-focused trainings.

How?

Over the 2 days, students experience Professional Scrum with the practical application of Scrum. Students work together as a team in a series of Sprints to build a product, thereby facing real-life problems. The rules, roles, and principles of Scrum are leveraged during the exercises. From its emphasis on the practical application of Scrum, the course exposes common missteps and misunderstandings, so students grow a higher awareness of the associated symptoms. The course provides prescriptive guidance to avoid going off track and keep Scrum healthy.

What previous students have said?

We ran a small experiment with students who attended a PSM course and had little or no knowledge or experience of Scrum beforehand. We offer them to attend a PSF the following week, if they could gives us feedback on - "Which would you recommend to someone, PSF or PSM, who has the current experience & knowledge you had before taking either course?"

"I enjoyed both courses honestly but if I had the opportunity to choose which to take first I would take the PSF first. My reason is that the PSF is broad and covers all areas of scrum, and obviously has a lot of fun exercises. It's fun to work as a Scrum Team in Sprints to deliver a product & the exercises to learn Scrum. The PSF is also more laid back on the second day which relaxes everyone. The PSM on the other hand is more specific and detailed compared to the PSF. It would greatly benefit someone who has some knowledge on what scrum is.  My recommendation is the PSF first." Fortunate Ngwang - Changing career.

"As with the PSM course, the PSF was fantastic! I will be suggesting that people take this one before they decide to take on either PSM or PSPO. Despite being a virtual class, the level of interaction was amazing, and your teaching style speaks volumes in terms of the number of people, including myself, who crack the not-so-easy assessments with flying colours. Thank you! " Abhijeet Basu - Project Manager.

What you get for taking the course

• Facilitation and coaching from highly experienced Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainers.
• Debunk myths, dispel misconceptions, and gain a true understanding of Scrum.
• Gives students the knowledge and direction to start using Scrum and cutting practices immediately after the class.
• Create a transformation plan for the adoption of Scrum within your organization/team in the class with the support of the trainers’ transformation experience
• 2 attempts at the Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master I certification and a 40% discount from Professional Scrum Master II certification.

Resource: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/why-should-i-attend-scrumorg-professional-scrum-foundation-course

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