Here follows our Agile Boot Camp course outline. We offer a compressed 1 day or a full 2 day Seminar. We introduce you to the key concepts of Scrum including the theory, the roles, the work products/artifacts and we work on hands on example projects.
We high recommend you download a copy of the Scrum Guide. It is your best first step into gaining the knowledge you’ll need to practice Scrum.
Agile Introduction and Overview
• Why Agile
• Agile Methods
• Agile Benefits
• Agile Basics – understanding the lingo Sprints vs. Iteration – Scrum Meetings [the real thing!]
Forming the Agile Team
• Team Roles
• Self organizing teams – where flexibility exists
• Communication – inside and out
Product Vision
• Five Levels of Planning in Agile
– Vision
– Roadmap
– Release
– Sprint/iteration
– Daily
• Importance of Product Vision
• Creating and communicating vision
Team Exercise: Write a vision statement and/or a problem statement. This can be very relevant if teams have not been operating with this level planning. If teams are already operating with a clear vision/problem definition, it is an opportunity to review. Each team should have an actual vision statement for their product that would be a solid foundation to build upon.
Focus on the Customer
• Users and Actors
• Customer Profiles
• Customer Participation
Team Exercise: Each team should identifying key customer roles, giving them a name, and describing key attributes about the customer. These customer roles are presented to other teams and good idea sharing takes place.
Creating a Product Backlog
• User Stories
• Acceptance Tests
• What makes a good story
• Story Writing Workshop
Team Exercise: Each team will conduct a brainstorming session for creating a product backlog in the form of user stories. Each team will present some of their user stories and the instructor will lead discussion about where teams hit the mark and areas for improvement. After some feedback and sharing, if time permits, each team will take a second pass at creating some user stories.
Prioritizing the Product Backlog
• Methods for prioritizing
• Building Trust
• Expectations for prioritizing stories
Team Exercise: Teams are tasked with assigning a priority to their user stories at the appropriate level of detail.
Estimating
• Actual vs Relative estimating
• Story Points
• Estimating Team velocity
Team Exercise: Teams are tasked with assigning story point estimates to enough user stories to extend at least a few sprint/iterations into the future. Teams will be given enough time to begin to see some consistency in their team and triangulate relative sizing of their stories.
Release Planning
• Utilizing velocity
• Regular rhythm
Team Exercise: Teams are tasked with building a release plan by incorporating priority, story point estimates, team velocity and customer/product owner input to assign stories to sprint/iterations with desired release points.
Story Review
• Getting to the details
• Methods
• Keeping rhythm
Team Exercise: Teams need to get to the precision of the details of what is required. The Teams will use screen mockups, data design, process flows, use cases, etc. This practice helps teams maintain a regular rhythm, when delivering working software each sprint/sprint/iteration.
Sprint/Iteration Planning
• Task breakdown
• Time estimates
• Definition of “done”
• Active participation
Team Exercise: Teams should review the details of the stories that may be completed in the first sprint/iteration. Tasks will be identified that would be needed to achieve the desired result. Teams will discover that user stories may need to be split into multiple stories and re-estimated. Teams assign actual time estimates to the tasks identified. The larger group discusses the pitfalls of committing more than can be delivered and the importance of making and meeting commitments for both the team and the customer. One of the keys to Agile is a regular rhythm of commitment and delivery for both customer and developer teams.
Sprint/Iteration Execution
• Collaboration – value individuals and interactions
– Communication
– Daily Standup (Scrum)
– Taskboards
• Rhythm
Team Exercise: Taskboards are an invaluable communication tool during each sprint/iteration. Each team is tasked with coming up with their task board that communicates clearly their commitments for the sprint/iteration and progress against those commitments. Teams present their taskboards to the larger group, generating further good idea sharing among the larger team. At their task boards, each team then can hold a daily standup, with one person on the team responsible for ensuring the integrity of the meeting and other team members playing out assigned behavioral roles. With the larger group we will discuss the critical role of an effective daily scrum. The entire group can share perspectives on the definition of done and the importance of determining that as a team. Team approach is reinforced…start as a team, finish as a team.
Measuring and Communicating Progress
• Actual effort and remaining effort
• Burndown/Burnup charts
• Tools and Reporting
• Your company specific measures
Course discussion: Instructor will lead a discussion on the effectiveness of the measurements appropriate for Your company.
Sprint/iteration Review and Demo
• Sprint/iteration Review
• Demos – a change from the past
Retrospectives
• What we did well
• What did not go so well
• What will we improve
Team Exercise: Teams will hold a retrospective on their experience during the course, specifically on what they learned during the exercises with their team. Each team is then tasked with identifying what things they plan to incorporate into their next sprint/iteration.
Bringing it All Together
• Transparency
• Rhythm
• Team Roadmap
Team Exercise: Teams will discuss establishing a roadmap for adopting the most useful principles and practices learned during the course. The larger group will discuss how this Team Roadmap could be maintained as part of ongoing retrospectives. The instructor will share insights into how teams have successfully adopted Agile principles and practices as well as what pitfalls to avoid.