SCRUM QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Scrum - ANSWERS1. It is framework for complex work such as new product development 2. It is an iterative and incremental approach which emphasizes on time-boxing. 3. It is a light weighted agile methodology and an alternative to the traditional approaches. 4. Scrum does not encourage "Partially Done". AnswerWhen do we use Scrum? - ANSWERSWhen the requirements are uncertain and technology is unknown. In other words when the work is more unpredictable. AnswerRoles in Scrum - ANSWERS1. Product owner 2. Scrum Development Team 3. Scrum Master AnswerResponsibilities of Product owners (Single Ring-able neck) - ANSWERS1. Business Value 2. Prioritize the product backlog 3. Final arbiter of the requirements questions 4. Focused more on what rather than how? 5. Vision and boundaries. AnswerScrum Master - ANSWERS1. No management authority. 2. Moves impediments out of the team. 3. Keeps the team away from other distractions. 4. Doesn't have a Project Manager role. 5. Acts as a facilitator. 6. Gets the team out of the way for natural team self organization. 7. Helps people to train on scrum 8. Promotes improved engineering practices. 9. Enforces time boxes, provides visibility. Time Boxing: Having a limit on time availability for meetings etc. 10. Captures imperical data to adjust forecasts. 11. Makes sure scrum artifacts are available. 12. No decision making authority during the sprints. 13. Increase rigor in the definition of done. http://ScrumMasterC AnswerArtifacts - ANSWERS1. Product Backlog 2. Product Backlog Item (PBI) 3. Sprint Backlog 4. Sprint Task 5. Sprint Burn down Chart [x: Days spent y: Amt of work] 6. Product/Release Burn down [x: No. of sprints=average velocity] [y: story points] AnswerProduct Backlog - ANSWERSA list of anything we might ever do. A PO prioritizes them high to low. Anyone can add into it. But the PO is responsible for the prioritization. It does not contain task only PBI (Product Backlog items) in user story format or use case scenarios. 1) Everything that the team would do through out the project. 2) Visible to all stakeholders. 3) Any stakeholders can add items. 4) Constantly re-prioritized by PO 5) Items at top are more granular than items at the bottom. 6) Maintained during backlog refinement meeting. AnswerPBI (Product Backlog Item) - ANSWERS1) Specifies what more than how? 2) Written in user stories 3) Has a product wise definition of done to prevent technical debt 4) May have item specific acceptance criteria 5) Effort is estimated by the team ideally in relative units. 6) Effort is roughly 2-3 people days or smaller for advanced teams. AnswerHow long is a well formed PBI towards the top? - ANSWERSNo longer than a quarter of a Sprint. AnswerForce Ranked - ANSWERSThere is only one thing at the top of the prioritized product backlogs. Getting an organization to do that is considered a break through. AnswerSprint Backlog - ANSWERSCommitted to do right now. It has an end date. Committed Backlog Items representing the what Sprint Tasks representing the how Scope committed is fixed. Team will discover additional tasks needed to meet the fixed scope commitment during sprint execution Referenced during the daily scrum meeting. Visible to the team. 1) Committed backlog items 2) Tasks not started 3) Tasks in progress 4) Tasks completed. AnswerMeetings - ANSWERS1. Sprint planning meeting 2. Daily Scrum 3. Sprint Review Meeting 4. Sprint retrospective meeting 5. Backlog refinement meeting. AnswerBacklog Refinement Meeting/ Product Backlog Grooming/ Backlog Estimation/ Story Time - ANSWERSTime Box: Same duration each sprint(5% of every sprint activity) 4 hours Some days before the Sprint Review Meeting to give the PO a little time to prioratize the user stories. PBI (Product Backlog Item)- INVEST-Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small and Testable Purpose of Meeting: a) Estimation of effort Effort Estimation Techniques: 1.Planning Poker 2.T-shirt sizes 3.Relative Mass Valuation b) Clarification of requirements Decomposition of large PBIs into small user stories. Strategies to split a PBI into smaller user stories: 2 types- horizontal and vertical splitting. Horizontal Splitting- Goes with applications layer or the kind of work. This again becomes like the water fall model and hence not encouraged. Vertical splitting- 1) Split by workflows 2) Split by business rules 3) Split by happy/unhappy flow 4) Split by input options / platform 5) Split by datatypes or parameters 6) Split by operations 7) Split by test scenarios / test case 8) Split by roles AnswerSprint planning Meeting - ANSWERSThe PO and the Scrum Dev team will agree to the Sprint goals and negotiate which items from the product backlog will be committed to the sprint backlog. 4 hours time box to plan a 2 weeks sprint. 8 hours time box to plan a 4 weeks sprint List of tasks necessary to complete the committed PBIs. Committed PBIs---Split into tasks----Tasks assigned to individuals-sprint goal Scrum Master- Check if eveyone is committed to the PBIs even if it requires different tasks. Scrum Master commits to keep the team away from other work. PO will guarantee availability during during the sprint to finalize on requirements questions. And would volunteer to be available during the Daily Scrum. Sprint commitment is now called Sprint Forecast according to the scrum guide. Prioritizing techniques: All these techniques are used because they focus more on quality than quantity. 1. MoSCoW(Must, Should, Could or Won't) It works with story cards. 2. Kano model: Customer Satisfaction with the level of functionality that is being provided. Value, Quality and Innovation. a) Satisfaction b) Execution Three types of requirements: a) Performance requirements b) Basic Requirements c) Excitement Requirements Excitement today=expected tomorrow=will be asked for later d) Reverse Requirements: Increase satisfaction when they are missing. e) Indifferent- Doesn't make a difference to people. 3. Value Stream Mapping- Uses flow charts to illustrate the flow of information needed to complete the process. This process can help find non value added elements. 4. QFD (Quality Function Deployment) AnswerWIP - ANSWERSWork In Progress: Better Measure of work- How much work has been finished. AnswerDaily Scrum Meeting - ANSWERSTime Boxed to 15 min What did I do Yesterday? What will I do today? What impedes me? Sprint Task Boards: Not Started, In progress, Completed. Sprint Burn Down charts, Impediments List. Side Bar Topics (Scrum after Scrum): Ex: The Product owner was not available. AnswerWhat is a good size of a sprint task - ANSWERSone person-day or less, so other team members can easily detect when a task is stuck. AnswerInformation Radiators - ANSWERSTask Boards or Sprint Burndown charts. AnswerTest Driven Development - ANSWERSWrite Tests (initially would be failing tests) Write product code Refactor Code Finally getting the normal use case done. AnswerRefactoring - ANSWERSimproving internal structure only, E.g removing duplicate code. AnswerWhen are regression tests conducted in Scrum? - ANSWERSContinuously as things change; potentially many times a day. AnswerSprint Review Meeting - ANSWERSTime Boxed to 3 hours. 1) Open to stakeholders. Time Boxed according to the sprint length-4 hours 2)Live Product demonstration. (PSPI) 3)Product owner will decided if the acceptance criteria for the accepted PBIs have been met as in the Sprint planning meeting and if the goals have been met. 4) Items which are not done will be moved back to the Product backlog. 5) Lastly we will listen to the stakeholders product feedback which may result to new requirements for the PO to prioritize them according to his vision. Provides feedback about the product and its emerging requirements. Scrum Master should help the Po and the stakeholders to convert the feedback to new product backlog items for prioritization by the PO. AnswerVelocity - ANSWERSWhen the PO considers the items done they will be counted as the velocity. Its purpose is to help the PO forecast. Calculated in story Points(Number of story points per iteration). This can be optional. Initial velocity- Estimated velocity before no data is present. text book definition: 1/3rd of capacity. But usually at the start of the sprint an arbitrary value is considered and the processes goes ahead from there. Average velocity- sum of story points from all sprints/number of sprints Optimal Velocity- The point where it has reached the highest. AnswerDefinition of Done - ANSWERS1 approach : Properly tested refactored potentially shippable Detailed Approach: Code Complete Unit tests written and executed Integration tested Performance tested Documented (just enough) Stage a: User story clarity, Task identified, Build setup changes, PO approval, PB updated Stage b: Environment ready, design complete, unit test case written, documentation, pre-release builds. Stage c: Code complete, unit test cases executed, refactoring, code checking, code merging and tagging. Stage D: Automatic code review, peer review, Code coverage, burndown chart ready, release build. Stage e: Functional testing, Regression testing, performance testing, acceptance testing, closure. AnswerDefinition of Done 2 - ANSWERSNot only the code complete but the software has to be tested at the feature level. Only then its done-done. That by itself helps the doubling of the productivity. Managing the time to fix a bug can help the team reach done state early. The lesser the time to fix a bug the better their definition of done. In real time they try to get the bug fixes to less than 2 hours. Anytime it goes over that they do a root cause analysis which will generate a list of impediments and by removing them the team can go twice as fast. Definition: Done done means the software is tested at the feature level and there are no outstanding bugs. AnswerProduct backlog vs sprint backlog - ANSWERSProduct backlog- Everything related to the project that we would be ever doing. Sprint backlog- Items on which we would be working only in that particular sprint. AnswerSprint Retrospective Meeting - ANSWERSTime Boxed: 3-4 hours for a 1 month sprint. The purpose of the Sprint Retrospective is to: Inspect how the last Sprint went with regards to people, relationships, process, and tools; Identify and order the major items that went well and potential improvements; and, Create a plan for implementing improvements to the way the Scrum Team does its work. Impediments: Invisible gun effect, human tendency to jump to conclusions, dispersed teams. Used Mostly for learning what went well in the sprint. Provides feedback about the processes used by the team to build the product. Scrum Master: Facilitates the meetings and does not involve with the content of the meeting. They try to create a learning environment. They list out the happenings. Status leveling techniques: a)Safety Check: 1) Give out blank ballots 2) Think of a situation in your life which you left unsafe, uncomfortable or awkward. 3) Now bring yourself to the mos comfortable and relaxed situation ever. 4) Now ask them to jot down the level of safety, description and comment on them. 5) Now collect them and tally their votes. 6) Ask them to interpret the histograms of the results. This activity can help understand the team's psychological comforts and feelings. especially during the initial sprint. b)Focused Conversation Principles: Objective Question (What Happened?) Reflective Questions (How do we feel about it?) Interpretive Questions? (What does it mean?) Decision Questions(What are we going to do about it?) c)Basic retrospective d) Silent writing: Silent Writing is a technique implemented to hear out all the team members problems and then make decisions. Objectives: categorize them into Good, bad, neutral, things you weren't sure you wanted to write. e) Timeline retrospective: Write down your recollection of previous sprint events. Stick them on