Wednesday, February 29, 2012

SCRUM - Dos and Don'ts

Background


Many people practice Agile these days and many of them are with SCRUM Methodology. We need to draw a line on what we must do and what we must not. Reason are simple, it violates the essence of Agile.

Read here: SCRUM Principles.

Dos and Don'ts


  • Do: Allows only one person to play the SCRUM Master role within the team.
  • Don't: Never run a SCRUM with more than one SCRUM Master or rotates the SCRUM Master.
  • Do: Ensure SCRUM Master and Product Owner roles were played by different person.
  • Don't: Never make Product Owner and SCRUM Master the same person. It creates conflict of interests.
  • Do: Scales your SCRUM team when it makes a large team or it is geographically separated.
  • Don't: Never make a team larger than 7 nor geographically separated. Your first impediment before your SCRUM starts will be distance, and distance and distance!
  • Do: Favour the approach of SCRUM for SCRUM. Creates sub teams to run proper SCRUM and runs another final SCRUM with ALL sub SCRUM Teams' SCRUM Masters and SCRUM Product Owners respectively.
  • Don't: Never run a SCRUM that cannot be scaled.
  • Do: A SCRUM Master/Product Owner works best when he/she has 1 team to run. Less good when with 2 teams.
  • Don't: Never let the same SCRUM Master/Product Owner runs more than a team if you want to build a successful SCRUM team.
  • Do: Listen to everyone's concern in retrospective and make sure you have them copied.
  • Don't: Never defence for the team when in SPRINT Retrospective.
  • Do: Team oriented and takes ownership.
  • Don't: Never take anything beyond the team. Don't be personal, and it is never anything about you or anybody.