Quick Guide Transition to Scrum - English -...

Presents

Quick Start Guide for

Transition to… SCRUM

Author: Olivier Lafontan Contact: [email protected]

leanpizza.net

Quick Start Guide for Transition to SCRUM Leanpizza.net

Copyright Olivier Lafontan | leanpizza.net (c) 2010 page 2 of 11

Contents

CONTENTS 2

INTRODUCTION 3

FRAMEWORK DESCRIPTION 4

AGILE ENABLEMENT: TRANSITIONING TO SCRUM 5

Context 5

So, what it’s in the Scrum Transition deck? 5

How to Use the Deck 7 • Assess where you are 7 • Plan your Scrum transition over time 8 • Plan your Timeboxes / Sprints 9 • Run your Time boxes / Sprints 9 • Release Valuable Results 10 • Review how you work / Inspect and Adapt 10 • Revisit your Release Plan 10

TO CONCLUDE 11



Introduction The main purpose of this guide is to help people who want to try and use the framework. I first presented the approach at Agile France in June 2010, and at the time I did not have any form of documentation to give out to the attendees of the session. This guide is the second part of documentation - the first being for the “Change Management Model” (see and download at http://leanpizza.net/?page_id=63 ) itself - being released for it, and I hope it will present a way to use the deck in a palatable way. I am also working on a more exhaustive piece of documentation that will go into much more detail on each card of each deck, exploring the logic behind the card and the best way to use deliver against it. As always, please let me have your feedback if you think something is missing or needs clarifying. You can get me at: [email protected] or visit http://leanpizza.net/?page_id=63 and leave a comment.



Framework Description The vast majority of people with some experience in transitions towards Agile agree that it represents a cultural shift for most organisations or groups attempting it. It is not about just “doing Agile”, it is also about reaching to the hearts and minds of people involved or impacted by such a change. In fact, the “doing Agile” is no the main part of an Agile transition, the main part is about getting people involved, bought in and motivated to keep going. The bit where we transition towards Agile is in effect nested within the larger change process (see figure 1 below).

To accompany this statement, the framework I propose consists of 2 main parts:

•Part 1: How to Set Up the Change Initiative for Success •Part 2: How to do Agile Within this Positive Context

As this is a quick guide, I will not explain all the cards in detail, I will instead focus on how best to use the decks, at what time and with whom. In this document, we will focus on circle number 2 above, where new practices and behaviours need to be implemented in a consistent manner. In the case of this particular guide, Scrum is the particular method that we will discuss and that the cards refer to.



Agile Enablement: Transitioning to SCRUM

Context I love making visible artifacts when I am on clients site. I love the way simple pieces of cards, paper, highlighted by a few colours can make all the difference for a team, a manager, a stakeholder, and a coach. I have been coaching teams in their agile transitions for a few years now, and for the first few years, I was always left with the distinct issue that I could not really show how the team had progressed in terms of using the agile techniques I was hired to help them implement. Of course there were a few things that other coaches had done that I could have re-used, but none of them entirely satisfied me. Then about three years ago, I virtually woke up with a concept of using cards for describing the wanted behaviours, and using some self-similarities, I also rapidly saw how I could bring in the new artifact to a team and make it usable and useful by and for them. I implemented the concept on my next client and the result was nothing short of remarkable (in my eyes). The feedback from all stakeholders was fantastic, and for the first time in my career I actually finished my this engagement with a real sense of achievement, knowing what I had done and what was left to do by the team. Three years on, I am still fanatical about the concept, and I always try and find ways to better the approach. The latest improvement to the concept is the fact that the Deck we will discuss in this guide become even more powerful when used in conjunction with the other deck, the Change Management Deck (inspired by John P. Kotter (see http://drfd.hbs.edu/fit/public/facultyInfo.do?facInfo=ovr&facId=6495 for more details and complete bio). The Scrum Transition Deck covers the various ceremonies and behaviours one would want to see from a team saying that they are indeed “doing Scrum”. It is made of a number of cards. These cards are sequenced and organised in a logical order, and as such, each of these cards represents a positive Acceptance Criteria for the transition (an Acceptance Criteria is in a behaviour or state we expect to see demonstrated). The answer to the Acceptance Criteria on a card is boolean (yes / no), and every time an answer to one of these Acceptance Criteria is “no”, there is yet more work to do progress towards success in transitioning. Transitioning a team / company to Scrum will require some changes to happen within the organisation. Implementing Scrum CANNOT be achieved successfully unless some care is taken to lead and manage the overall company change initiative. That’s what the first Deck (Organisation Change Model deck) will also help you achieve.

So, what it’s in the Scrum Transition deck? There are 67 cards in this deck.



This deck can be downloaded from: http://leanpizza.net/?page_id=63.

There are 6 themes, each of them represents particular sets of behaviours expected when doing Scrum and using its ceremonies, and each theme is colour coded for ease

of use when sorting cards. Each card is also numbered for the same purpose.

The dark pink colour is for Product Backlog Management

The orange colour is for Release Planning

The green is for Sprint Planning

Daily Planning and Tracking is in blue

Red is for Show and Tells / Sprint Reviews

Finally, purple is for Retrospective / Continuous Learning



How to Use the Deck

The diagram below gives an idea of when and for what the deck is intended to be used.

•Assess where you are If you have already started to implement Scrum in some of your teams, you may want to quickly assess where they / you stand against the model. Here is a simple way to do this (you can do this on a wide table, or on a wall. (I used some Magic Whiteboard sheets to create these examples, as they are static, it is easy to move the cards around)

Note: Each team or project that needs to be assessed needs to follow the this. a) Write “Pass” at the top of your working space, and create 2 columns, 1 for “NO” one for “YES”. This sets the seen to allow you to start looking at each card in sequence and ask yourself the following question: “Do I pass the acceptance criteria / state described on the card?” (YES / NO)

b) Take the deck and go through the cards one at a time, and ask answer the question: “Do I pass the acceptance criteria / state described on the card?” (YES / NO) Place / stick the cards in the

column they belong to (as shown on the left)



Do this for all the cards in the deck. In the end, you should get something like this.

•Plan your Scrum transition over time

At this point, what we have is a view of what has been achieved to date, and effectively what remains to be done. In this respect, what we have on the left is our Backlog of items to work

on. This is useful to start our planning process. In terms of timeline, the most likely is that the team is undertaking this transition during a real project timeframe. I would therefore suggest that you look at the project timeframe and start splitting it into equal size time boxes, or Sprints. Make sure you do this graphically somewhere visible for the team. You can now align the Scrum Transition Sprints with the project time boxes, as shown on the left.

This is the most natural thing to do as this minimizes the sense of “another project within the project” How? Look at the cards in each Step and estimate the complexity of passing each of these Acceptance Criteria. What tasks would you need to perform, how many meetings would



you need to hold, how many people would you need to involve, would some activities actually require some lead time to complete. Once again, no need to go to extremes when it comes down to estimating. The truth is, you could plan this thing for 6 months and still get it wrong. So, get a stab at it, a first baseline that you feel comfortable with and work from there.

Make sure you plan some of the most important things first, like getting a good grasp of your Product Backlog, being able to Plan your Releases and the Retrospectives, which are the mechanism you will use to inspect the way you work and adapt it to move closer to your desired agile end state.

•Plan your Timeboxes / Sprints

In the example on the left, the project has already started, and we are planning our next Scrum Transition baby steps for Sprint 2. In this example, the entire team agrees to try and implement the behaviours described on these 5 cards. This agreement can be done formally during your project “Sprint Retrospectives”, which feels the more natural place to do so, since this is where the team inspects the way they are working and find other ways to improve.

•Run your Time boxes / Sprints Organise some space wall to display the Cards you will be playing in your Sprint. In the example on the left, you can see a team that has got both the Project Sprint Backlog and the Scrum Transition Sprint Backlog on the same wall, one above the other. Just like for the project Stories, make sure you understand the tasks you need to perform before a Scrum Transition Card is effectively “Done” and make those tasks visible. A fast daily Stand Up meeting with all people involved in working on the tasks on the wall will be beneficial.



Make sure you update the wall, including the capture of any blockers or impediment. As you have probably gathered, the same ceremonies as Scrum uses can be used here with good results.

•Release Valuable Results When you have something valuable to release or push out, do so at every opportunity. Getting feedback as early as possible will be a huge help in your initiative and will ensure that you are not wasting your time on something people don’t understand or are fundamentally against. You will find good ways to manage your backlog, run your release planning and sprint planning sessions, as well as stand ups, show and tell and retrospectives. When that happens, communicate to the rest of the teams and the organisation.

•Review how you work / Inspect and Adapt At the end of every Sprint, ensure two things happen: 1/ review the WHAT has been achieved, and demonstrate it to your stakeholders (these will / might change during the change initiative) 2/ review the HOW things have gone, and find ways to improve it. We are essentially talking about doing a SHOW AND TELL and a SPRINT RETROSPECTIVE for the Scrum Transition itself here.

•Revisit your Release Plan After every time box, review how much of your plan you have effectively delivered. You may find that passing these Acceptance Criteria might be easier than first expected, or the same as expected, or more difficult than you thought. In any case, make sure you keep your overall timeline and Release Plan updated with this information.



To Conclude I hope this guide will be useful and used. I also hope that people who decide to use the decks let me know about their experience using them, what worked for them, what didn’t. My ambition is to make it richer and more adapted to more and more people, ultimately getting more and more organisations to transition successfully to Agile, which is after all the real purpose of writing this. For any additional information or for comments, please contact me at: [email protected] or visit www.leanpizza.net To come shortly on leanpizza.net: - an overall “Guide for Transitioning to Scrum” including both decks guides - I am also planning to work on a specific XP (eXtreme Programming) transition deck, but not until the above deliverables are achieved. However, if the demand (priority) for this becomes higher, I might start earlier.

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