28
votes
Accepted
Should I ask my boss not to come to retrospectives?
It sounds like you have team members from high power distance cultures. People may not speak up when the boss is in the room because their values require them to listen and follow, not to advise or ...
- 396
26
votes
Accepted
In Scrum, is a Scrum Master position higher than a Product Owner?
It's impossible to answer your question because "Scrum Master" and "Product Owner" are roles, not job titles. Their job positions may be different and depend on the company.
For example, a Product ...
- 5,301
26
votes
Accepted
Is the Product Owner allowed to be at the Daily Scrum event?
Product Owners Are Silent Observers in Daily Stand-Ups
In the quoted description, the word participate has the connotation of "taking an active part." The Product Owner should attend, but should not ...
- 49.8k
25
votes
Accepted
What can a Scrum Master do in a team that has mastered scrum?
I don't think there is a simple answer to this question. Instead, I think there are a number of different scenarios:
A team is very experienced in Scrum and rotates the Scrum Master role. They have ...
- 19.4k
24
votes
Hot swapping people in a scrum team
The situation you describe is Scrum Zombie, not Scrum. My answer will try to organize a few of the aspects you mentioned.
Software developers are not resources
business needs the resource and cannot ...
- 1,107
24
votes
Accepted
What is a failed sprint?
According to Mike Cohn
It’s quite common for a team to have a bit of unfinished work at the end of an agile sprint or iteration. Ideally, a team would finish every item on its sprint backlog every ...
- 2,084
22
votes
Accepted
Why use both story points and hours?
Story Points Estimation and Hours Estimation have different purposes.
We use Story Points during Product Backlog Refinement.
Story Points are good for high-level planning.
When we make an ...
- 5,301
19
votes
Does the scrum master also estimate user stories?
If you do development work in the sprint, you should estimate. If you don't, then it's better you skip on providing your own story points estimates.
You can help your team with information and advice, ...
- 15k
16
votes
Accepted
Sprint vs milestone vs release
Sprint
In the Scrum Framework all activities needed for the implementation of entries from the Scrum Product Backlog are performed within Sprints (also called 'Iterations'). Sprints are always short: ...
- 559
16
votes
Accepted
How can we register the technical debt in Scrum?
Scrum Exposes Technical Debt Through Forecasts & Estimates
As a general rule, technical debt increases the cost of future work on the product. So, even if you don't explicitly keep track of the ...
- 49.8k
16
votes
Should I ask my boss not to come to retrospectives?
Analysis
There is a chilling effect when he is here. Am I overreacting? Should I just try to build up the confidence of the team? or should I ban my boss from the retrospective?
In my experience, ...
- 49.8k
15
votes
How technical should a Scrum Master be to effectively remove impediments?
Am I missing something?
I think you are missing the main point of "impediment", that is a blocker that the team is not equipped to handle themselves. The Scrum Master is not supposed to be a better ...
- 8,428
15
votes
Should the Product Owner be from our organization or the company we are contracting with?
And I'm going to take the middle ground between Bogdan and Thomas...
Whichever side has the more competent PO.
Bogdan already listed the responsibilities of a PO. To (over)simplify it in a single ...
- 14.8k
14
votes
Accepted
Should a burndown chart be based on stories or tasks completed?
In order to make the burndown chart useful to the Product Owner (or the customer or the user or another stakeholder), then burning down based on stories is going to be the better option. Since a story ...
- 19k
14
votes
Not sure what value the Scrum Master role adds over a long period of time?
Great question! A lot of Scrum Masters get boxed into Scrum Facilitators early on because that's what a team learning Scrum largely needs. However, as the team gets better at organizing itself, the ...
- 16.9k
14
votes
Accepted
How to measure if Scrum Master is making a difference and when to give up
The key to team improvement is good retrospectives.
When I started running retrospectives, I found they often just degenerated into whingeing sessions that didn't achieve much, other than giving the ...
- 558
14
votes
Accepted
Should the Product Owner be from our organization or the company we are contracting with?
There is no canonical answer to this question, although as a rule of thumb, it would be better for the PO to be from the client side, not the contractor side.
The Scrum Guide says this about the PO ...
- 15k
13
votes
Accepted
Difference between Scrum Master and Agile Delivery Manager
The "Agile delivery manager" seems to be an undefined/undocumented role, and from what I read in the job openings is mostly a combination of a Project Manager, a Product Owner and a Scrum Master. ...
- 5,533
13
votes
Accepted
Is Team member sharing possible in Scrum during a Sprint?
TLDR: Beware the 100% utilization fallacy.
I'm going to ignore your stated question ('is this normal?') and instead attempt to answer the underlying question.
Swarming is possible
As per the Scrum ...
- 14.8k
13
votes
Accepted
Conflict between priorities and skillsets in the backlog
The Scrum Guide does not talk about prioritizing the Product Backlog. Instead, it talks about ordering the Product Backlog. Priority is only one factor that can be used to determine the ordering of ...
- 19k
13
votes
Agile Retrospective: Comments Anonymous?
The retrospectives I facilitate are not anonymous.
If a team member asked me to allow anonymous comments I would certainly do so. I would then try and investigate why psychological safety was so low ...
- 19.4k
12
votes
Accepted
What is lead time?
Wiki has the common definition of this term:
A lead time is the latency between the initiation and execution of a
process.
If your working area is software development, then the definition from ...
- 5,301
12
votes
Accepted
What to do when PO is taking over Daily Scrums
Neither PO nor Scrum Master is responsible, but the team is supposed to conduct daily standups. As a Scrum Master its your job to facilitate the team and make sure that process is being followed. ...
- 3,217
12
votes
As an Agile Coach, how do I deal with argumentative and uncooperative team members?
TL;DR
You are taking a potential team composition problem and making it your problem. That is not agile; that is a misunderstanding of your role. From an agile coaching perspective, teams need to be ...
- 49.8k
12
votes
Is the Product Owner allowed to be at the Daily Scrum event?
Yes, you absolutely want your PO at the Daily Scrum.
First off remember that the Scrum Guide is something like 17 pages and only covers the broadest brush strokes.
The product owner is part of the ...
- 12.5k
12
votes
Accepted
Can scrum master interrupt team member during daily Scrum?
Is it the responsibility of the Scrum master to intervene and interrupt a team member when he/she starts telling about points beyond those 3 that I mentioned?
Technically speaking, no. The purpose ...
- 14.8k
11
votes
In Scrum, is a Scrum Master position higher than a Product Owner?
Scrum says nothing about hierachy.
Thr Scrum Master position is not a higher position than the PO or the DevTeam position.
The idea is to not think in hierachy levels! Think about a team of peoply ...
- 211
11
votes
What's expected from different career levels for a Scrum Master?
I think the different levels can relate to the Agile Onion as described by Simon Powers.
Entry level: Can implement the tools and processes, but doesn't have a good understanding why the processes, ...
- 5,533
11
votes
Accepted
Problem with in Scrum team - with seniors
Parts of your question smack more of a workplace issue than a Project Management issue, but I'll answer what I can.
Is this common in Scrum teams?
Doesn't really have anything to do with Scrum. ...
- 14.8k
11
votes
Accepted
What's an easy and sustainable way to introduce pair programming?
How to roll out pairing in a Scrum team?
I am afraid there is no right answer to this. It all depends on the existing team dynamics. Nevertheless, what is almost always relevant is to understand ...
- 864
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible