Throughout these years, with the experience, I try to contribute to the community what they have learned in this post, are brief tips or advice, and learning experiences exposed the agile world:
- Always make agilismo on a bulletin tasks:
You can have digital tools, yes, provided that the equipment demands, or equipment de-localized have, but either one way or another, always try to have a board area to display our work and to hold meetings Sync before him.
- Learn to do daily:
The daily is a powerful "weapon" in the agile world, not only in scrum, can synchronize equipment that is being made and where there are problems to help and assist in obtaining the common goal, which is simply to complete successfully the sprint, or deliver the highest possible value. But the daily meeting is not a progress report, either by the team or by the scrum master, much less by management or product owner. If our daily becomes a "status report" is better quit, until the right climate to recover, cooperation, transparency and confidence in the team.
- Change questions daily:
There are three questions that are usually performed in the daily, basis standard: What did you do ?, Whatcha gonna do ?, what problems you found ?. It may be the case that in some teams these questions do not provide nothing, end up being a status report or just the team loses creativity, desire or illusion to perform the daily, "every day is the same story." When this happens we have to change the strategy, rather than ask what I have done, because we do not ask what have you done? , What have you completed since the last daily? What task has finished ?, What story has ended ?. This would give us 3 new questions to ask:
What have you completed ?, What are you going to complete ?, Are you sure you end up ?.
Change the question and change the vision, it no longer focuses on what I've done, where I have worked since the last daily, if not the commitment to completing tasks, stories, a major new commitment is acquired than just work.
Share burndown chart in the daily, to see how being the sprint, view the progress of the team.
- Do not talk if it's not your turn:
Among those values is agile communication, focus, etc, but there is one above all, respect for people. We must build teams with courtesy and respect, if not your turn do not interrupt, if you do not like to be interrupted do not do what they do not want for yourself, if you have nothing to contribute because not just talk the talk, are brief, effective and your conversation adds value.
- Hold meetings Parking:
Try to be concise, a reason why the team may not want to dailys can become too much time talking about things unrelated to the target of daily, then parked these issues for later deployments concrete, dialogue of two people, decisions that affect the team. They may be issues not related to sprint or the intent of the daily. Take them and treat them to a panel after finishing daily. You centrarás daily attention on relevant issues and subsequently with a common vision of the team, you can try the other topics, which may be as important as the daily, but "now" it's time to treat them.
- Conduct meetings foot:
If a daily or a retrospective is much more effective standing to sitting, you lose concentration, you relax, entertain yourself, if you do the meetings standing up, people are more agile, quicker to talk and resolve problems and issues. Centras focalizas care and content tagging and desired objective for that meeting.
- Meeting hospital: If the daily becomes a dangerous meeting with problems within the team, with bad words or forms, where tension is seen, it is better to change to a hospital meeting where these issues will speak, and will seek to identify the problems and solve them with transparency, honesty and communication. Non stop, as equals.
- Use a Token:
To facilitate dailys or gatherings where shifts in word or speech applications are not respected, it is useful to use a token (pen object selected by the team), and gives the wearer the object the power to speak for a preset time.
- Respect the times:
Go to meetings with a well-defined script, advance planning time (even mark 10 minutes margin). This will help us to respect the time, terms and topics, giving value and authority to postpone a meeting moderator or it finished after the time set previously completed. We must be agile, maintain focus and not overwhelm or tire the audience. We try to notify 24 hours in advance of any meeting to be held in the future.
- Try to keep the commitment:
Keep the committed team, I appreciate it, cuddle and display their work and mental state. Avoiding boredom, lack of motivation. This can be visualized with information and panel radiators karma.
- Learn to say thank you: To say thank whenever a partner speak well of you, I recognize your work, and when you criticize constructively, to make it look that has failed and learn. This makes the team stronger, and the team consists of people.
- Do not obstruct the iterations: Try not to hinder the iterations, especially during the first third and last third, let speed take and in the middle of the iteration make appropriate prioritization meetings, grooming, etc.
- Make the Product Owner work:
Not only the team and have to work Scrum Master, the Product Owner during the sprint has to work, detailing the stories future candidates into the next sprint, prioritize them and make them visible to the team, making grooming meeting with the team, breaking them down more if necessary, until the team has to understand that, having established some initial acceptance testing (Definition of done), which will mature sprint to sprint or during the sprint. The Product Owner revise, eliminate, consolidate and decompose stories.
- Learn estimates need not be final:
Teaching, educating the team, Product Owner and stakeholders that the estimates are not to be late, only when in the sprint estimate is valid. While it is possible that sufficient information on such stories have not, or simply that they have not used all the resources in the analysis of that history. Visualize all the information possible, uncertainties, risks, etc, and try to eliminate the obstacles and impediments that we always possible before including these stories in a sprint.
- Set clear objectives:
Never lose sight of the objectives of the sprint, the meetings, the daily points the day to try, time limits, and always have a moderator chosen prior to the start of any meeting (this not always have a Scrum Master). In the meetings have to go around the world is necessary, not everyone.
- Do not be afraid of the backlog:
Do not be afraid of the items that are lower in the stack backlog, aim to identify risks and problems always, even when they are down on the backlog. We will help the Product Owner prioritizes again to identify the associated risks.
- Learn to say no:
We must educate people to say no, in the middle of a sprint can not get a story, "because I said so", there must be a compelling reason or a negotiation to tell if something comes in, nothing comes out. Say no to a poorly defined, poorly planned, poorly estimated, say no to an impossible, to something that does not add value and thereby obtain no ROI history. To show the Product Owner and stakeholders the value of that no, do not think that is not because I want to, but it has a compelling reason for not only for the team.
- Trying to have poison in the stories:
If we try to pollinate knowledge, to avoid "islands of knowledge" to have no risk factors, we can identify the poison in the stories that they have, and for that we identify the difficult stories, stories that make us out of our comfort zone, stories involving a (technological risks, difficulty) danger.
- Always make retrospective:
Always try to be in continuous improvement, and this improvement comes by to inspect what we have done, see how good we have done and maximize, learn from bad to make or not to fall into the same mistakes. It serves to inspect and adapt new practices.
- Pollinating:
Pollinate, share, educate, encourage teams and individuals involved, with large capacity, letting their creativity flow, communication, transparency, above guidelines, tools and ceremonies, are the values. Promote team spirit, empathy between people, mutual and shared knowledge, the value of equipment, support and learn from each other.
