agile

Common Pitfalls When Implementing Scrum for Enterprise

Hey guys, Anatoly from Define Agile here. We have a pretty serious topic today. Brad asked me this question on Quora. Thank you. That is an amazing question.

“What are the common pitfalls when implementing Scrum at an Enterprise?”

Yes, of course, nothing is really easy. I’ve been able to implement Scrum multiple times in Fortune 500 Enterprises. However, there are definitely some issues. What are the most common ones?

I’ll start with the biggest one right away – stakeholders. In a Waterfall organization stakeholders often are very reluctant to accept the change. So whenever one department says they want to do Scrum, stakeholders usually say, “We don’t want anything to change in our process. So, how we communicate with you should stay the same”.

How to solve this ? What I find very useful is to get a “round table” with them, explain the new process, explain the benefits, make sure they understand Agile well – that helps a lot.

Second issue – people in a team who used to work in certain way for years. This might be challenging. To solve this you need to establish trust, and really explain the value of Agile.

The third challenging thing is that even though teams have direction to move to Agile, many people don’t understand what Agile actually is.

In order for you to move teams through the Agile transformation, all people in a team need to understand what Agile is and some people need to evangelize Agile, otherwise, it just does not work. We are not talking only about developers here – your manager, his manager need to understand it as well.

This third point is exactly why companies like Define Agile exist. Our main goal when transforming any team is to teach Agile to everyone, so that if you are doing Scrum, any team member can be a Scrum Masters, and others can pass the Agile knowledge forward.

So If you are planning to go through an Agile transformation , I would highly recommend you to hire a partner to do this. It is a very important step, and if done wrong, can demotivate everyone.

Hope that helps,

Anatoly

School of Agile

What Makes a Great Scrum Master?

Hello, my friends. Today we’re talking about a very interesting topic, very controversial, and so a lot of Scrum Masters and Agile coaches might disagree, which I’m okay with but I’ll tell you my opinion.

What’s the difference between a great Scrum Master and an average one?

I have three criteria based on my ten years of experience, what defines a great Scrum Master.

Has cross-functional experience

First of all, a great Scrum Master needs to have a cross-functional experience. So, this person apart from being a Scrum Master should have had an experience in some different role (or roles) in the software development life cycle, whether it’s beings a developer, being a QA, being engineering manager, being a product owner, project manager, CTO, anything else apart from just being a Scrum Master because all those experiences will help you to better understand the situation from different angles. This is one of the most important things in our Scrum Master’s job.

Work ethics

A great Scrum Master should have great work ethics. You’re dealing with a lot of conflict, a lot confidential information, so you should always be able to know when to say certain things and when not to say certain things. Always have your team’s back. If something is happening, you should take responsibility and you should be able to act, you should be able to remove impediments. So, work ethics is very, very important.

Dealing with change

Thing number three – and it is for almost any profession, but for Scrum Master, it’s crucially important – is dealing with the change and learning on a fly.

You will have to do a lot of things you’re not comfortable with, that you’ve never done before – how you deal with that, that’s important.

Great Scrum Masters, they embrace the change, they do whatever is needed to be done to remove impediments, they learn on the fly, they are polyglots, they know a lot of different things and are able to support their teams in any way needed.

Those three things will be something that I think defines a great Scrum Master apart from the average Scrum Master. Sorry, average Scrum Masters if you don’t have one of those three, probably you’re not great yet but keep on doing it and keep on getting there.

If your team needs a great Scrum Master, Agile practitioners, or your team needs to be moved to Agile, please go to DefineAgile.com, schedule a free consultation with me, and let’s see how me and my team can help your business.

School of Agile

Can Scrum be used in a Law Firm?

Hey guys, Anatoly from Define Agile. Here I’m answering your questions. These two questions came from Nacho Martinez.

He asks:

“What’s your opinion about applying Agile Project Management, Scrum, Kanban in legal firms?”

That’s a great question. Yes, you can definitely apply Scrum and Kanban to not only software development projects but such things as legal firms or any other projects, because it teaches you to respond to change. For example, in a Legal Firm you can have a Kanban board for different legal cases. You can move them from to-do to done. You can visualize your work. You can limit your work in progress so that you don’t take too many cases at the same time . This would be a quick example how Kanban can help you with your legal practice. Of course there is much more to it.

From Scrum, you can use planning. When you plan, what you’re going to work on with your team on this upcoming week or two weeks or a month.You can have retrospectives, where you talk about your current processes, and what can be improved. You can also have daily standup to catch, reviews to review your work – etc. Scrum is a good choice here.

So, yes, you can definitely apply those principles from Scrum and Kanban to legal firms. If you need my help, I’ll be happy to help you with that. We work with not only software teams but all other teams that you can think of. So if you need my help, go to DefineAgile.com. Let’s get you a free consultation and help you out.

The other question was:

“What exactly is the difference between Lean and those two methodologies from the perspective of a legal business?”

First of all, Lean is more mindset than a framework. Lean is about testing your assumptions, delivering Minimum Viable Product, improving, testing again, while Scrum and Kanban are frameworks how to implement Agile. This is the difference. These two can be combined together. You can definitely use Lean mindset to always change, to always improve, to always show progress, and you should.

Hope that helps!

School of Agile

Why do Waterfall Projects Fail?

Hi guys, Anatoly from Define Agile here. I keep on answering your questions. This one is from VJ. He asks, “Why do Waterfall projects fail compared to Agile projects?”

It is a great question. Before I start talking about Agile, I just want to tell you that this is not completely true.

First of all, some companies do Waterfall amazingly. It works for them and they don’t fail. They succeed and sometimes there are projects that Waterfall might be much better suited than doing Agile. For example, If you’re building a bridge, you know exactly how long the bridge is. You have all the requirements up front, Waterfall might be and ideal way to handle that.

However, where Waterfall fall short is when projects are complex, where there are a lot of unknowns and it’s hard to get all the requirements up front .

Time have changed significantly in the last 20 years. You can’t spend years gathering requirements anymore – you need to take action and deliver value as soon as possible.

Also, client mindset has changed. Clients want to see progress every week, they want to be part of the process.

Often clients just want you to prototype something and then see where it goes. They might not know what the next iteration will be. Waterfall does not accommodate dealing with change very well. It becomes very costly.

Hope that helps!

If you need my help to move your team through an Agile transformation, please click on FREE Consultation and lets talk!

School of Agile

Should Scrum Master Be Technical?

Hey guys, Anatoly from Define Agile here.

Today I am answering a question from Sabah Omer. Sabah said:

“Thank you so much for recording the video. I am looking for your advice on students or professionals without an IT/software backgrounds as myself, pursuing certification and then a career in Agile Consultant/Scrum Master. I want to learn and then pursue Agile/Scrum roles as a career. Do you need an IT background to be a Scrum Master? Can individual without an IT background be successful as Scrum Master? Thank you. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.”

First of all, thank you, Sabah, very much for posting this question. It’s a very important question. There are lots of people who are not in the IT field who want to move to Agile and Scrum, and I think it is very important for them to know how to do that.

My opinion is it is totally possible to start be a Scrum Master without an IT background. I know a couple of great Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches that I worked with who do not have an IT background and they are very successful. However, I also think that it also depends on which teams you’re working with.

Personally, I have an IT background , I work as a Developer and I understand software lifecycle. It helps me to work with technical teams.

So if I work with teams that are doing low level programming, there is no UI, for me it is easier to talk to them then for a person who does not have a technical background. I speak their language.

However, there are lots of teams that do not require that deep technical of knowledge. For example some teams I am working with are building marketing pages – they do not require my technical expertise at all.

Moreover, please remember that not only IT companies require Agile help – there are hospitals, there are restaurants, there are clubs. Everyone right now is moving to Agile, because it works better. So, it’s not just for IT.

So, please do not stop pursuing Agile career if you don’t have an IT background. Just start with getting a certificate, start with looking for companies and for job descriptions that do not require in-depth technical knowledge – there are many of those. I’m sure you’ll do great.

School of Agile

Tips on Efficient Daily Scrum Meetings: Agile Project Management

Hi guys, Anatoly from Define Agile here. I keep on answering your questions. The question of today is“What are the best tips for efficient daily stand-up meeting in a job project?”

Tip #1: Make sure that everyone in your Development Team is present on every stand-up.

Why is it important? It’s because a stand-up is all about finding dependencies. If somebody is not present, we might not state some dependencies, which might be detrimental for the team later on.

Note: If you find that the team is late for stand-up, maybe talk to them, and move stand-up to a later time. If you have remote workers, make sure you accommodate for their time zones.

Tip #2: A stand-up needs to be short.

Make sure that the stand-up is not longer than 15 minutes. Make sure that somebody in your team can track time.

Note: If you see the conversations are going for too long, make sure to let people know that they can talk about it after stand-up and they can just catch up later.

Tip #3: Talk about things that are related to other people work.

Make sure that everyone who talks during a stand-up, they talk about things that are related to other people’s work. Stand-up is all about making sure we’re finding dependencies, we need to unblock all those things that bother us.

Those would be some of the main tips for you to have a successful stand-up.

School of Agile

How to Get Started with Agile and Scrum

Hey guys, what’s going on? Anatoly from Define Agile here.

I keep answering your questions and this one is: “How do I get started with Agile and Scrum?”

It’s a very, very good question. A lot of people are just starting out, a lot of teams are just starting out, and they are not sure which way should they go. There are so many options and I’m going to navigate you through a couple of them so at least you have some idea where can you start.

Option 1 if you have lots of time: Be a Self Starter, try it with your team and lean from your mistakes

First of all, how did I start with Agile and Scrum?

In 2011, I was a software engineer, when I have realized that a lot of our projects have changing requirements. Very often client would change their mind, and we would have to re-plan everything. I have realized that, doing a typical traditional Waterfall method did not work very well for us. At this time, I was reading about Agile and Scrum and I decided to ask my team to try it.

We were trying it for about five months. At first we made lots of mistake, we did not follow Scrum the way it was written, then in about five months, we were able to finally get to a good version of Scrum and Agile. It was pretty cool. We tried it. I learned a lot.

Mind you, not everyone has that amount of time or able to fail that much. You might have stakeholders, you might have executives, who won’t be happy with that, but I had this option- so I took it.

Option 2 for individual, if you don’t have much time: Get Certified

The other option would be, if you want to learn about Agile and Scrum as an individual, you might consider getting certification.

To prepare for certification and to understand what you are getting yourself into: there are two things you need to read. First one is Agile Manifesto which states all of the principles of Agile, the other thing, if you have decided to do Scrum is Scrum Guide .

Certification will give you credentials, but mind you it is not necessary. You can learn it all yourself, and for the most part you can facilitate meetings without having a certifications.

If you are looking for certifications, the one I would recommend Certified Scrum Master (CSM) from Scrum Alliance. You will learn in a class the basics of agile and scrum and will get certification upon completion. The price varies per vendor, but on average it is about $1,500 + travel expenses.

The drawback of certification course is that you will be the only one who understands Scrum and Agile, and it might be tricky to explain it all to your team. From my experience, much better approach is to transform your whole team to agile, that way everyone can be a Scrum Master.

Option 3, for team, if you don’t have much time: Transform your whole team

The third option would be is to hire a company that would onboard your whole team to be Agile. And there are many different solutions. I cannot speak for other ones but I can speak for what Define Agile recommends.

We have our own two-day Agile Introduction Course led by our two Agile Coaches. They have about 20 years of experience moving many, many teams for Agile transformation. We cover things like:

What is traditional Waterfall method?
What is Agile?
What is Agile Manifesto?
What is Agile mindset?
What is Scrum? What are the ceremonies?
What is Kanban? How can you choose between those two?
When should you use certain frameworks ?
How to persuade your boss ?
How to implement Agile with tools like Jira ?

For the team of 11 it is cheaper per person than certification.We are doing it all over the world. We have lots of happy customers. If you’re interested in that, please go to here and schedule a FREE Consultation.

School of Agile

How to Practice Agile Facilitation: Agile Basics

Hey guys, Anatoly from Define Agile here.

Today’s question is, “How do I practice my Agile facilitation?”

That’s a great question. If in a company that is interested in Agile, the easiest way to practice your Agile facilitation is to talk to your boss and say, “Let’s do some retrospectives.” A retrospective is a best way to practice Agile facilitation. You can incorporate some exercises – they’re cool, they’re fun, and it gives you a lot of experience.

Say to your boss: “I want to make sure that everybody’s happy with how they are doing things. Can I take an initiative and do a retrospective? We’re going to meet with the team and then talk about what works, what doesn’t work for us.”

When you get a green light – find some good exercises ( this website would be an example of some exercises).

What if your company does not want to practice Agile, or you don’t want to practice on your colleagues (which I recommend is the best way) ? Get a couple of friends and then do a retrospective with them about your friendship. It is important to practice as much as possible.

You can also do it for your goals and plans. If you want to plan a vacation – do the planning in a retrospective format – “Where I want to go ? What I want to do ?”. Collect information from your spouse and kids. You can definitely do that. Then after the vacation, you might have a retrospective. Talk about what worked well, what didn’t work, and what do you want to improve.

So, I highly recommend to do it as much as possible because the more you practice it, the better you become.

School of Agile

Difference Between Project Manager and Scrum Master

Hey guys, Anatoly from Define Agile here.

The question that I got asked yesterday was: “Most often job postings are written as a Scrum Master/Project Manager. What is the main difference between Scrum Master and a Project Manager? How can you apply those two skillsets to fulfill the needs of the organization?”

That’s a great question. I see those postings up and then people say, “I need to be a Scrum Master and a Project Manager.” I’m here to tell you these are two very different roles. It’s the same as to say “I want to have QA/Developer,” you might think it’s the same but it’s definitely not.

Scrum Master is here to help and support with the process. Scrum Master supports the Development Team while Project Manager is here to manage the project, making sure the project is on time, on budget, making sure the stakeholders are informed about how the process of creating projects or completing project. Scrum Master has nothing to do with that.

Usually when a person tries to fulfill both roles, I don’t find it successful. I find that Scrum Master and Project Managers are on a different sides. They have different accountability. A Project Manager is accountable to external stakeholders or to upper management, while Scrum Master is accountable to Development Team. If one person has too many people he or she is accountable to, there’s a conflict of interest. So, I don’t recommend having a Project Manager and a Scrum Master being the same person.

As an option, which I talked about in “What is the Difference between Product Owner and Scrum Master,” I recommend having a developer to be a Scrum Master if you can’t find a dedicated Scrum Master. Because the developer is a part of the Development Team, developers have an interest of having their Development Teams happy.They are interested in having good process, because it benefits themselves.

Hope that helps!

If you want me to help your teams with Agile, please click on FREE Consultation, and lets see how I can help your business!

School of Agile

Agile versus Waterfall Methodology

Hello again, my friends. . Anatoly here from Define Agile. We’re discovering the world of Agile together, and today we’re talking about the topic that is a big one. Most of people are confused by it. Most people are asking lots of questions about it. What is the difference between Agile and Waterfall methodologies ? I will cover on a very high level.

If you look at the difference between Agile and Waterfall from the very high level – Waterfall is a project that you must delivery in full by Cretan date. You go through stages of your project and in the end you deliver the whole project to your client. You know the scope, you know the budget in advance and itself is very well defined.

Agile, on the other hand, is iteration-based. It’s you deliver a little bit of value – often. In Agile end scope might not have been defined and funding may not have been defined. You even don’t know if this is going to succeed or not. You’re just testing stuff up until you figure out what works, working with your clients and your team to iteratively delivery solutions to certain problems.

Now, let’s go and look at the detail and look at different categories and how they stuck to each other.

Scope

Scope in Waterfall is very well defined. You have a contract of work that you need to do, you know exactly the whole scope from start to the end.

In Agile, you know the scope of the first iteration or several iterations ahead, got some vision, but you don’t know if you’re going to implement it in a certain way. You iterate and base your decisions on data.

Funding/Budget

In Waterfall, funding and budgeting should be done up front. You gather requirements, and get your budget for the whole project.

In Agile, your funding might be for a certain iteration. And then you’ll see, if you have enough traction with your product, you may put more funding. Since the end scope is not defined, the funding can be as big or as little as you want it to be or as the market receives your product.

Client Interaction

In Waterfall, you interact with your clients at the start, you plan everything with them and then you might have some touch points to see, if you are on track, to deliver this contract of work that we decided right away. There should not be any surprises with the client. If stuff changes, there might be a little tweaks but they need to change all that funding and you need to change the scope and stuff like that. So, it’s a big work if any change is happening.

In Agile, you constantly talk to your clients. You deliver a little bit, the client looks at it, if they like it then you move on. If they don’t like it, you repeat the same process until client is satisfied. i

This is my quick rant on Agile versus Waterfall. It was a very high level overview of those two just to get your feet wet in deciding which one to choose.

“What are the common pitfalls when implementing Scrum at an Enterprise?”

Has cross-functional experience

Work ethics

Dealing with change

“What’s your opinion about applying Agile Project Management, Scrum, Kanban in legal firms?”

“What exactly is the difference between Lean and those two methodologies from the perspective of a legal business?”

Tip #1: Make sure that everyone in your Development Team is present on every stand-up.

Tip #2: A stand-up needs to be short.

Tip #3: Talk about things that are related to other people work.

Option 1 if you have lots of time: Be a Self Starter, try it with your team and lean from your mistakes

Option 2 for individual, if you don’t have much time: Get Certified

Option 3, for team, if you don’t have much time: Transform your whole team