The #DarkScrum Formula
Ron Jeffries coined the term #DarkScrum. #DarkScrum occurs when we focus on enforcing Scrum mechanics rather than reinforcing Agile Values and Principles. This results in…
Category: Scrum
“I intend to …, and …”
I was co-training an Agile for Teams workshop with Rob Myers last week. This group had been trying to do Scrum, with some success. Our…
“We don’t expect a perfect Sprint. We expect a perfect effort.” – i.e. Commitment
As I train and coach Scrum across the country, I’m often struck with the power how certain words can create a sense of fear in…
Principle Based Agile/Scrum Adoption
I’m a pragmatist. I need things to make sense. So, when something like principles are introduced to me, I start to ponder questions like… What…
Ask A4A: Long-running Stories
Hi Richard, My Scrum team has been working on a particular service for over a year. It’s been 20+ Sprints. I’m concerned about the deliverables…
Making Info Visible for Better Decisions
A key part of the ScrumMaster’s or Product Owner’s job is making information visible.* Whether that’s a product backlog, taskboard, cumulative flow diagram, or a…
Why Most People Split Workflows Wrong
Workflows are a very common element of software. But they can be hard to split well when you’re trying to work in small, vertical slices…
Vertical Slices and Scale
Last week, I tweeted, Working in thin vertical slices is the keystone habit for agile software development. It enables so many other good practices. —…
New to Agile? Build trust to grow influence and impact
Transforming the way you work to an Agile approach has implications for the relationship between software teams and their customers and stakeholders. But in many…
Scrum as an agent of culture change
Peter Drucker invented most modern management practices. He was an in-demand coach to hundreds of top leaders in the world’s largest organizations. When he suggested that “culture…
Scrum as an agent of culture change part 2
In part one of this series, we defined culture. We also described why it is both critical and hard to work on. Finally, we left…
Early Agile Scaling at Adobe
Scaling agile is a hot topic these days. I’ve recently given a presentation at a few local user groups about the experience of scaling agile at…
Viktor Frankl’s Meaning Triangle for Organizations
Viktor Frankl was an incredible human being, having survived the Holocaust and establishing logotherapy, a type of psychotherapy. His book, Man’s Search for Meaning, details…
Splitting Stories in Chinese (or, 用户故事切分招数)
Thanks to Bob Jiang for the translation (with feedback from Evelyn Tian and Daniel Teng). This poster is also available in English, French, German, Russian,…
Running Agile at Home
Agile is merely a philosophy of how to change the way we think about delivering value. Powerful ideas have grown from the original philosophy, namely…
As a ScrumMaster silence can be golden!
I love it when someone who was in one of my workshops sends me a message saying something from the workshop worked well for them.…
In defense of the Scrum Alliance
Have you ever felt really let down by someone you respect? I guess the way the world is today we can all cite a long…
I’m a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) – so what?
This is a companion post to last year’s “I’m a Certified Scrum Coach (CSC) – so what?” post. In that post I spoke about the…
Agile antipattern: Sizing or estimating bug fixes
Is the bug to the left a large bug or a small bug? It looks HUGE to me! Well, in reality it is probably between…
New to agile? Remember a user story is more than a card!
What’s wrong with the user story on the card? It seems to have everything we need: a) short title, b) a size (in this case…
What's wrong with the user story on the card? It seems to have everything we need: a) short title, b) a size (in this case 2), and c) a well-written story using the standard "As a ... I want ... so that ..." format. So what's wrong? Nothing! Well, almost nothing. The user story card is a great STARTING POINT, but it is not sufficient by itself.
In coaching Agile and Scrum teams I see many of them starting out with the assumption that the user story card contains all the information they need in order to create a high quality piece of software. Forgive me for being harsh, but how stupid is that? Assuming a single sentence can fully describe something which might take a few days to analyze, design, code and test seems pretty ambitious. No, let me take that back. It's more than pretty ambitious, it is just not possible. So I ask again, what's wrong with this story card?
And again I'll answer that there is nothing wrong with it, but it is a STARTING POINT. Many people are familiar with the phrase "INVEST in good user stories" which is an easy way to remember to use the INVEST acronym for guidance when creating user stories. I wrote a blog entry about that titled "
Next time you see a user story card don't ask yourself if you need to have a conversation about it. Instead just assume you need to have a conversation and have it! Go to the Product Owner or customer or customer proxy and ask to discuss the story. Make notes for yourself. In fact it is even better (vital in my mind) to have the conversation involve a developer, tester and product person. I call them 3-headed conversations. This allows everyone to be on the same page so later there is no disagreement about what was really meant by the story. This avoids one of my least favorite conversations which happens when the tester and developer disagree about what the requirement means AFTER the code is written.
If you are using an agile lifecycle management tool rather than physical cards, record the decisions made during the conversation and any resulting confirmation tests in various fields in the tool. You must make sure the information is captured in case someone else who was not part of the original 3-headed conversation ends up doing some work on the story.
Try using the 3 C's and see if your results improve. I'm sure they will.
Until next time I'll be Making Agile a Reality® for my clients by continuing to train and coach them to use the 3 C's effectively.