Taming Project Management Chaos With Scrum

Taming Project Management Chaos Applying Scrum Methodology Using Agile Software Erik Hansen

Friday, January 27, 2017

Contents How much do you know about Scrum?

• Slides 3 to 5

The nuts and bolts of running Scrum.

• Slides 6 to 8

Our preferred Scrum tool: Yodiz • Slides 9 to 11

The pros and cons of using Scrum as a solution • Slides 12 to 13

Set up your Scrum team • Slide 14

Plan and prioritize your work • Slide 15

Constantly review the feedback you receive • Slide 16

Cost considerations for Yodiz • Slide 17

© 2017 Logic20/20. Confidential. All rights reserved. Do not copy & do not reproduce.

How much do you know about Scrum?

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So, what is Scrum, really?

Scrum is a branch of agile project management developed by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber and made popular for its ability to improve a team’s quality, visibility, and speed of delivery.

“Scrum embraces uncertainty and creativity. It places a structure around the learning process, enabling teams to assess both what they’ve created and, just as important, how they created it.

The Scrum framework harnesses how teams actually work and gives them the tools to self organize and rapidly improve both speed and quality of work.”

—Jeff Sutherland Scrum provides a scalable, product-agnostic framework that enables: • a quick completion of assignments.

• a transparent analysis of what made their completion successful.

• an iterative approach to introduce process improvements. © 2017 Logic20/20. Confidential. All rights reserved. Do not copy & do not reproduce.

The power of concentrating on one thing at a time Multitasking wrecks your ability to focus.

Studies have shown that switching contexts, where one multitasks between multiple projects, short-circuits your productivity, creativity, and acuity.

• Each time your mind moves from one project or task to another—shifting from one context to another—you have to rebuild the mental architecture involved with each separate project.

• This multitasking dilutes your productivity for each project: it’s a waste of energy and time.

• Scum empowers you to focus on one specific task of a project at a time, increasing productivity.

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The nuts and bolts of running Scrum Scrum is structured around a recurring series of meetings held during a repeating, fixed-length sprint that‘s typically one-week long: • Backlog refinement

This is led by the project’s visionary (a.k.a. product owner). It’s an evolving to-do list of everything the team wants and needs done.

• Sprint planning

Here, the team figures out what they can accomplish for their next sprint; all sprints are equal length.

• Daily Scrum

This is a brief check-in by the team that’s no more than 15 minutes long.

• Sprint review

It’s a showcase of what the team finished at the end of the sprint.

• Sprint retrospective

During the meeting, the team looks at how they can immediately improve for the next sprint.

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The power of a sprint: feedback with every meeting For a one-week sprint, this is a typical meeting structure with feedback gathered at each one: Backlog refinement Once a week for one-half hour Sprint planning Once a week for an hour

Backlog refinement Sprint retrospective

Sprint planning

Scrum Daily for 15-minutes or less Sprint review Once a week for one-half hour Sprint retrospective Once a week for one-half hour

Sprint review

Scrum

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Scrum provides visibility and accountability Team-wide visibility for all aspects of a project is a keystone of Scrum.

This includes everything from epic-level initiatives (the big ideas) to the user stories that make up these epic to-do tasks (the steps taken to make the big ideas a reality).

Scrum teams see each other’s work by using a Scrum board featuring: • four tracking columns that are titled “To do”, “Doing”, “Done”, and “Accepted”. The columns hold the team’s user stories for the current sprint, and the user stories are visible by everyone.

• user stories tracked via a point system using the Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc.). This is a way for the team to size the effort of each user story: e.g., a 1 is something needing little effort.

• a backlog of epics and related user stories that are stack-ranked during each fixed-length sprint cycle by the product owner. Again, all epics are visible by everyone on the team.

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Our preferred Scrum tool: Yodiz The tool Logic20/20 uses, and recommends, to run a Scrum team is Yodiz.

Yodiz was chosen for its adherence to Scrum methodology, ease of use, features for both business and tech teams, customer service, and adoption by some big names (Nokia and Motorola, for example).

Other Scrum-management platforms we considered included: Traditional sticky-notes (functional, but completely analog and time consuming) Smartsheet (lacks many basic Scrum features) Microsoft’s Visual Studio (not user-friendly; lacks important features) JIRA by Atlassian (functional, software-only focus) Trello (looks good, but lacks basic Scrum features) TargetProcess (poor U.I.; lacks important features) Planbox (poor U.I.; lacks important features)

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A Yodiz Scrum board in action Scrum teams see how their sprint is progressing by using a Scrum board.

Here’s the cloud-based Yodiz board, which features a UI synched with their browser and smartphone apps:

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Yodiz generates Scrum analytics and enables forecasting One of the most useful Scrum data-visualization tools is the sprint burndown chart.

This chart is based on the Fibonacci-sequence points assigned to each user story. As user stories are moved from the “To-do” column into the “Done” column, the amount of points left to finish decreases.

After several sprints, a team can average their completed sprint points to forecast future workloads.

Below is an example of a Yodiz burndown chart where the ideal progress of a sprint’s user story completion rate (in blue) is compared to the actual progress of a sprint’s user story completion rate (in red).

© 2017 Logic20/20. Confidential. All rights reserved. Do not copy & do not reproduce.

The pros of using Scrum as a solution Scrum pros include having: • ownership and accountability clarified in relation to a project’s to-do list backlog.

• an efficient way to prioritize projects in an always-changing environment.

• visibility and accountability into the team’s day-to-day activities.

• the ability to track tasks and deadlines in one place and away from email threads.

• an easy way to provide project status updates and reports.

• an existing network of Scrum practitioners familiar with the methodology and the preferred agile software.

• the ability to quickly onboard people to both the scrum methodology and the preferred software.

© 2017 Logic20/20. Confidential. All rights reserved. Do not copy & do not reproduce.

The cons of using Scrum as a solution Scrum cons include having: • the project stall, or fall apart, if the Scrum framework is not respected by the entire team.

• visibility and process-investment issues if not everyone on the team has access to the preferred software.

• a resistance to change: Scrum has a reputation to be disruptive in the short-term.

• a ramp up period, however brief, for Scrum methodology and software training.

• pushback for obtaining the use-rights to buy the preferred Scrum software.

© 2017 Logic20/20. Confidential. All rights reserved. Do not copy & do not reproduce.

Set up your Scrum team Pick a product owner.

This person is the one with the vision of what you are going to do, make, or accomplish.

Pick a team.

Who will be the people actually doing the work?

Pick a Scrum Master.

This is the person who will coach the team through the Scrum framework and help the team eliminate anything slowing them down.

This condensed version of Scrum’s tenants is based on those found in the index of Jeff Sutherland's 2015 book, "SCRUM: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time." Š 2017 Logic20/20. Confidential. All rights reserved. Do not copy & do not reproduce.

Plan and prioritize your work Create and prioritize a product backlog.

This is a list of everything that needs to be done to make the product owner’s vision a reality. Only one product backlog exists.

Refine and estimate your product backlog.

It is crucial the people who are going to complete the tasks in the product backlog estimate how much effort each task will take. Do not estimate using hours: people are absolutely terrible at that.

• Estimate by relative size using the Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, etc.) with a point value for each task (user story).

Plan your sprint.

The team, the Scrum Master, and the product owner sit down to plan the sprint: all sprints will be the same length.

Most people run one or two-week sprints.

• One of the pillars of Scrum is that once the team has committed to what they think they can finish in one sprint, that's it. It cannot be changed. It cannot be added to.

• If absolutely needed, create a “chaos user story” to track mid-sprint interruptions and prevent them in the future.

Make your work visible.

Do this by creating a Scrum board with four columns: To do, Doing, Done, and Accepted.

• Additionally, plot a burndown chart using the Fibonacci sequence.

This condensed version of Scrum’s tenants is based on those found in the index of Jeff Sutherland's 2015 book, "SCRUM: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time." © 2017 Logic20/20. Confidential. All rights reserved. Do not copy & do not reproduce.

Constantly review the feedback you receive Hold a daily Scrum meeting.

This is the heartbeat of Scrum. Each day, at the same time, for no more than 15 minutes, the team and the Scrum Master meet and answer three questions: • What did you do yesterday to help the team finish the sprint?

• What will you do today to help the team finish the sprint?

• Is there any obstacle blocking the sprint goal?

If this meeting takes more than 15 minutes, you're doing it wrong.

Conduct a sprint review.

This is an open meeting where the team demonstrates what they moved to the “Done” column during the Sprint.

Anyone can come with an interest in the work. The product owner moves user stories from “Done” to “Accepted”.

Have a sprint retrospective.

After the team has shown what they've accomplished during the last sprint, they sit down and think about what went right, what could have gone better, and what they can improve for the next sprint.

Immediately start the next sprint cycle.

Make sure to take the team's experience with impediments and process improvements into account.

This condensed version of Scrum’s tenants is based on those found in the index of Jeff Sutherland's 2015 book, "SCRUM: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time." © 2017 Logic20/20. Confidential. All rights reserved. Do not copy & do not reproduce.

Cost considerations for Yodiz

Yodiz cost highlights: •

Cost is $5 per user, per month for the professional level.

•

2 months free on a yearly plan: no hidden costs, unlimited projects, desktop and mobile U.I.s, and a dedicated account manager.

•

Upgrade and downgrade at any time: if you downgrade the plan, your next billing date will be extended. Let's say you have 50 users.

If you have 6 months left and you downgrade to 25 users, your next billing date automatically moves out an extra 6 months.

•

Free for all non-profit initiatives.

© 2017 Logic20/20. Confidential. All rights reserved. Do not copy & do not reproduce.