Scrum and its success - 60000 CSMs
November 5th, 2009 04:16 pm · English, Good to know
Last week the Scrum Alliance published the number [1]. We are now more than 60000 Certified ScrumMasters. This year around 22000 ScrumMasters have been to classes and got the certification (of attendance). That is a bit more than last year, but not a jump like the years before.
So the market starts to consolidate! Bad news for everybody, who wants to jump on the rolling wagon now as consultant or trainer. It gets much harder to get you share in it!
On the other side. No market dump. The market for Scrum stays stable and that means it is a relative increase. If we assume that the rest of the IT and consulting market declined in 2009.
[1] Source: Internal Email to the CSTs by Howard Sublett.
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CSPO Class in Oslo
November 5th, 2009 04:08 pm · After a training, Product Owner, Scrum
Besides the fact that everything was against me, when I was in Oslo, the class was great! We discussed all relevant issues of being a Product Owner. Oslo has now 8 newly certified ScrumMasters. Congratulations!
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Last minute | CSM Trainings next week + Student seats
November 5th, 2009 12:43 pm · Scrum
There are 2 CSM Trainings next week:
Monday+Tuesday
9.+10.11. Vienna a german CSM class with ScrumCooking
Thursday+Friday
12.+13.11. Frankfurt an english CSM class
What we do regularly: Giving some seats to students.
SO ALL STUDENTS LISTEN RIGHT NOW:
I offer a FREE seat in Vienna and a FREE seat in Frankfurt in my CSM Training for a student. Be very well educated!
First come, first serve. Please send an email to kd(at)borisgloger.com.
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Some Gathering Links
November 2nd, 2009 08:31 pm · Scrum
Some interesting comments about the Scrum Gathering.
- Andy Brandt, Talks about some talks he attended [1]
- Armer Kater, [2]
[1] http://www.andybrandt.net/506/scrum-gathering-2009-day-three-and-final-comments/comment-page-1#comment-58182
[2] http://www.armerkater.de/2009/10/scrum-gathering-mnchen/
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Der klassische Projektmanager in Scrum
November 1st, 2009 08:37 pm · Scrum
… oder wie sich der klassische Projektmanager in Scrum auf die drei Rollen verteilt. Uwe Friedrichsen hat wunderschön und viel besser als ich es kann aufgeschrieben, wie sich die Rolle des Projektmanagers auf die drei Rollen PO, SM und Team verteilt. Sehr lesenswert.
[1] http://blog.codecentric.de/2009/10/der-klassische-projektmanager-in-scrum/
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CSM & ModT | November Trainings
October 30th, 2009 10:19 am · Scrum
Es gibt im November 3 Public Trainings für die noch Plätze gebucht werden können!
1) CSM Training mit Scrum Cooking (deutsch) in Wien - 9+10.11.
Diesmal im ehrwürdigen Palais Palffy mitten in Wien’s 1. Bezirk direkt neben der Hofburg. Natürlich mit ScrumCooking - ebenfalls im Palais.
2) CSM Training (english) in Frankfurt - 12+13.11.
Also for this training we’ve choosen a bit special place - the 25h hotel taylored by Levis. Very nice place in Frankfurt’s citycenter.
3) Fortbildung für ScrumMaster: Moderationstraining (deutsch) in München - 23+24.11.
Nach grossem Erfolg in Wien gibts das Moderationstraining mit Dieter Rösner diesmal in München! Direkt anmelden, es gibt nur eine kleine Gruppe!
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Remember The Future | Lowell Lindstrom | Scrum Gathering 2009
October 28th, 2009 09:40 am · English, Germany, Scrum, checked
Lowell Lindstrom gives an overview of “Remember The Future” Innovation Game played at the October 2009 Scrum Gathering in Munich. Co-facilitated by Lowell and Paul Culling, this game aimed to get ideas on how the Scrum Alliance could better serve the Scrum community.
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5 min on Scrum | Scrum and Design
October 27th, 2009 08:09 am · English, Organizational Scrum, Scrum, Software Development, checked
Interaction Design, User Centric Design, User Interface Experience and Scrum fits very well together if people who are in Scrum Teams stop thinking in GETTING IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME. The conflict that lies within the Interaction Design approach and Scrum [1] is the same conflict that we had in the software development industry since the beginning. If we know exactly how the result should be, than we can build it. Unfortunately this way of thinking creates a big problem: Speculation!
Scrum tried to solve all this: It is forbidden to have a prototype as a Sprint result. That you need a prototype for some causalities within a Sprint, ok. But not as a final result. Designers and developers need to work closely together within a Sprint. Stop believing you could or should know in details what you need to build in advance. Build it with the best ideas, check the result in the reality with the real thing and then do it again if you must.
[1] Interaction Design and Extreme Programming, http://stuq.nl/weblog/2009-02-11/interaction-design-and-extreme-programming
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“Level of Done” is not “Level of Professionalism”
October 26th, 2009 09:12 am · English, Methods, Organizational Scrum, Professional Software Delivery, Scrum, checked
Nothing is more misunderstood than the term “Level of Done” in Scrum. On the first glance Mitch [1] did a great job. And when I read this ideas a year ago I was flabbergasted. Wow - why did I had never worked with my teams on this. I must have been an idiot and I really wanted to implement these ideas in my consulting praxis. But I never did. I felt bad about this.
All people in the Scrum community around me, started to talk about the importance of the “Level of Done”, and how difficult it is to negotiate this with the Product Owner. I was again worrying. Do I do something wrong? Is it really possible not to work with your team on this? But something in me was blocked. On a sunny day in Vienna, sitting in my favorite breakfast location, it made suddenly “click!”
What people like Mitch [1], Dhaval [2] and Myank [3] sell as “Definition of Done” is not the “Definition of Done”. They found super cool ways to help people to determine on what maturity level either their developers can develop and/or at what maturity level the organization has established the code production.
To say it in more simple words: They found very nice ways to help development organizations to justify that they are not able to create potential shippable product increments at the end of a sprint. Sophisticated lists or even phrase like “Each team should collaborate and come up with the definition that suits its unique environment.” [3] are leading into the wrong direction. They make on one side transparent that this organization is not able to deliver potential product increments, but on the other side they do not help to change this.
Imagine a car manufacturer would tell his customers that the “Level of Done” he can produce is testable, without checks. The world of production does not work this way. They produce results.
“Level of Done” was never meant to be “Level of Professionalism”. Unfortunately it was understood this way. “Level of Done” was meant to tell to everybody on what level the product increment is ready. Finished on the developers machine, finished on the test machine, finished on the system integration machine, deployed to pre-production, or deployed to production. THIS WAS MEANT TO BE “LEVEL OF DONE”.
And this is the only thing you can negotiate with the PO. To talk about if we have “updated our architecture diagrams” or “operational procedure guides updated” [1] was not meant by this term.
It is very sad, that we in our industry really need to worry if teams do their jobs professionally. That Scrum Coaches need to help professional software developers to do their job was never the intention. But unfortunately we need to do this.
—
[1] Mitch Lacey, How do we know that we are done? http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/107-how-do-we-know-when-we-are-done
[2] Dhaval Pachal, What is the definition of Done? http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/105
[3] Myank Gupta, http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/106-definition-of-done-a-reference
[4] Michael Dubakov, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/170009/your-scrum-definition-of-done
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A game to bring Customers and Product Owners Together
October 25th, 2009 08:33 pm · English, Product Owner, Scrum, ScrumTools, checked
Tobias Mayer played with us an innovation game called Speedboat. This game helps people to work on new product ideas together. Have fun with this 5 minute video.
This game was invented by Luke Hohmann. And it is fun to play.
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RIA Summer Jam in München
October 23rd, 2009 10:57 am · Estimation, Events, Germany, Locations, Product Development, Scrum, Scrum Training, ScrumTools
[....] Weil der RIA Summer Jam 09 so schön war haben wir den Tag noch mal Revue passieren lassen und einige Eindrücke in Form von Texten und Bildern für euch zusammengestellt:
In der gelungenen Keynote mit dem Titel “Hilfe, Technik frisst Marke auf!”, präsentierte Boris Lakowski, wie mit Hilfe von Technik ein Mehrwert bzw. ein Wertverlust für Marken generieren lässt.
Unser Fazit: Technologie alleine bzw. als Selbstzweck macht im Zusammenspiel mit Marken (und auch sonst) wenig Sinn. Vielmehr eine intelligente und markengerechte Kombination beider Teile kann Mehrwerte im digitalen Umfeld schaffen. [...] [1]
[1] Mehr dazu findet ihr hier: http://www.fugmuc.de/ria-summer-jam-09-review_622.html
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Scrum Gathering | Interview with Brazil
October 22nd, 2009 03:28 pm · Scrum
During the Gathering we interviewed the participants from Brazil.
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Exclusive Sight-Seeing Tour around Munich in a Monstrous Hummer H2
October 15th, 2009 09:18 pm · Agile Planning, Events, Fun, Germany, Good to know, Locations, Scrum Meetings
You have travelled many miles to attend the Scrum Gathering in Munich? Why not use a break for a short but exciting sight-seeing tour around Munich?
And to make this experience even more interesting, how would you like the idea not to take a normal car or taxi – but to have a chauffeur drive you around Munich in an exclusive HUMMER H2!
All you have to do is to participate in our drawings. The odds to win are high, because our tours will take place during most breaks of all 3 gathering days – so have faith, contact our team members and participate. A great ride awaits you!
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How to Use Scrum Mixing Caipirinhas and Having Fun Drinking Them
October 15th, 2009 09:06 pm · Events, Fun, Germany, Good to know, Locations, Scrum
For all Scrum enthusiasts in Munich we have prepared an unusual appliance for Scrum on Tuesday evening.
Have you ever thought about all the different areas in life where you could use scrum to complete all kinds of tasks? One application we want to let you know is mixing cocktails, in this special case caipirinhas. OK, I admit that drinking them has nothing to do with Scrum, except that we can all relax a little bit after a long and laborious day at the gathering. The atmospheric Brazilian live music will hopefully do the rest. Looking forward to seeing you there!
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Your Free Beer Is Waiting for You at the Hofbräuhaus!
October 15th, 2009 08:51 pm · Deutsch, Events, Fun, Good to know, Scrum
The First 100 Beers are on me.
Are you attending the Scrum Gathering in Munich next week? Great, it’s going to be awesome. My team and I are planning some extraordinary events. For Monday, let’s meet at one of Munich’s oldest breweries, the Hofbräuhaus to get to know each other. And to let the conversations start easier – the first hundred beers are on me. So, make sure you are there on time to get your free beer. It’s waiting for you. My team and I can’t wait to see you all and to experience an interesting evening with you. For more information about where and when to meet – ask me or my team at the gathering.
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New Look
October 14th, 2009 08:00 am · Scrum
Surprise! Scrum4You has a new Look!
Hopefully you like it and find it more clearly layed out. You see the achievements of our third sprint. Up to now we’ve worked more on the backend, 3rd sprint brought a new theme. The website is still a Wordpress Blog but with some adhancements 
We go on working, so some more cool stuff is ahead. Backlog isn’t empty…
And let us show one of the nastieest impediments: http://www.savethedevelopers.org/index.php
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Scrum Gathering … 7 days … and the Count Down continous
October 11th, 2009 03:11 pm · Scrum
I am totally busy with preparing the Scrum Gathering. We, the bor!sgloger team, have some surprises for you prepared. f.e. Jodok Batlog and I will give you an inside into one of the most successful Scrum Implementations. We have a funny game for you prepared … and of course we will have some cool drinks for you. … and more.
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Scrum a Pyramid Scheme
October 8th, 2009 06:07 pm · English, Real Stories, Scrum, Scrum as Business
A [financial] pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business model that involves the exchange of moneyprimarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, often without any product or service being delivered. [1]
People who want to start a business doing Scrum … feel free. You will be successful if you are good in what you do AND if you are a good marketing and salesman.→ 2 CommentsTags:
Tobias Mayer on the step back of Ken Schwaber and the history of the SA
October 8th, 2009 03:52 pm · English, Language, Scrum, Scrum Artefacts
Tobias Mayer has written a super nice article about Ken Schwaber that I do not fully agree with [1].
Some notes about the history of the Scrum Alliance ….
The history of the Scrum Alliance started in 2002 with a website called www.ScrumAlliance.org. It was run by a very nice person who wanted to create a source for scrum. He stepped back and the Scrum Alliance was dead. I was involved in this, talked to Ken and he said, he will put not the names of all freshly certified ScrumMaster on a html page under the domain www.scrumalliance.org. This was the idea to help the community to see it is not a Ken Schwaber certificate, what it was in fact.
Autumn 2004 in Boston, Ken renounced the SA as a FOR profit organisation, Ken, Mike and Esther had been the founders. Why FOR profit. Just because of the hassle to create a NON Profit organisation.
And now happened what must have happened, as Ken and the others only wanted to make sure that we do have an organisation that can make sure it is not a Ken Schwaber show, all people believed now that the SA will run the business, will make the rules, will create the business model for all Scrum enthusiast. I was also not very amused … but for very personal reasons. I do not love to start something and suddenly I was not part of the game anymore. … I needed two years to understand that this was completely stupid.
Ken, Esther and Mike … this is now an assumption, guessing … had been far to bussy to run the thing they created well. Sometimes they wanted to do things fast and did a move, and the trainers got pissed by not getting asked, sometimes Ken was pissed because we did not understand him.
Then we had the Ken Rubin area of the SA. He was the first designated CEO of the FOR Profit organisations. From my european point of view … this changed nothing. Besides the fact that he managed that we, the CSTs, had suddenly a contract with the Scrum Alliance that was not what we wanted in this way, but what we CSTs demanded in a Trainer Retreat 8 months before. This Contract was the big ISSUE that caused at the end that also Tobias and someone else was pushed out from the SA for 10 months. Yes … this is the dark age of the SA. We had no idea what happened. And we needed to say yes to the contract, if we wanted to certify.
Basically this contract is not an evil thing. It only says I am not allowed to do any other Certification called Scrum besides the SA certification.
Transparency in all this activities? No! Here Tobias is absolutely right. A chance to do it differently … I doubt. Why, because there was no interest of nobody to change this. In the USA the business mindset took over. People who had been part of the game made too much money with Scrum. In Europe … we had been to far away, to have influence
Then Ken and Mike discovered some issues in the way the SA was run by Kenny and they hired a very very experienced guy in building non-profit organisations to rebuild the SA as a NON-profit organisation: Jim Cundiff. That started the last two years an area I call the new transparency area. No one was ever more open about the SA than he. And he changed the face of the SA from a Source for Scrum to an organisation that wants to transform the world of work [3].
He created new User groups, did super successful Gatherings and tried to build a community amongst us trainers. One result was that 7 of us, including me, tried to build something like a trainer board, without any power, because the trainers refused in Orlando to give this group of people any binding authority. That was ok, and we started to work. (I was too busy to do really something. sorry)
The area of Jim finished two weeks ago with the announcement that Jim and Ken stepped back from their duties in the SA. A week before Jim announced that he is not going to launch the test for the certification.
I only learned last week that we had in the SA a long discussion about Ken’s new idea of a Certified Scrum Developer Programm, between Ken and Jim and obviously others people in the board. Ken mentioned this program in a conference in Munich to me and the whole audience, but no more information went out. Also some of the CSTs in Germany asked Jim, there was silence. In the meantime Ken created some ideas about the CSD with Microsoft. A first trial training was given last week according to my information. More I do not know.
Two weeks ago, Lowell Lindstrom was suddenly announced as the new interims CEO, by Tom Mellor, Chief of the Board of Directors. (This happened without that we knew someone was searched) and earlier this week, Mike Cohn was announced as returning back to the Board of the Scrum Alliance. Again, no clear communication about that the Board of Directors wanted a new member.
Lowell tried to make very clear, he wants to proceed with the work of Jim. I really hope he will be successful. He has a lot of odds against him.
F.e. what I learned and know since the last Scrum Gathering, including the Scrum Trainer Retreat in Orlando, Spring 2009, most CSTs do not have a big interest in the Scrum Alliance. Some mentioned to me, completely honest: “What business interest do I have in the SA?” Jim mentioned with a lot of frustration … “Yes, the SA does have a personal relationship with every Scrum Trainer, not with the community.” The community of CSTs is fractioned, and most successful CSTs are not really participating in the SA. Most of them are frustrated because, we are not able to agree in nothing. But … as a justification … most of not really knew how, or have been busy building a business around Scrum (me, for example).
[2] (Again, my personal interpretation.)
[3] Vision statement of the Scrum Alliance. www.scrumalliance.org.
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Noch immer zu viel zu tun ….
October 8th, 2009 02:10 pm · Scrum
Die Auftragslage könnte nicht besser sein. Aber ich kann mich nicht klonen und mein Team braucht Verstärkung. Ich suche Scrum Consultants und Trainer. Ich biete … den coolsten Job der Welt. Wir verändern Firmen, wir machen sie produktiver und wir sind immer erfolgreich.
Lust mir beim Scrum Consulting in den Firmen aktiv zu helfen … email an office(at)borisgloger(dot)com.
Ach so … mein Job ist hard, beinhaltet: Reisen, Reisen, Reisen. 9 Stundentage und ständige Aufmerksamkeit.
There is not such thing like a free lunch. (Robert A Heinlein)
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Price for the best Scrum Tool Review
October 4th, 2009 09:07 am · Scrum
I have so much to do. I need your help. There are a lot of new Scrum Tools in the market. A lot of them are already mentioned in comments to my tool reviews. I need them reviewed by you …
If you want to write a review, please try to follow a bit the way I have done it so far. Sent your review to office[at]borisgloger[dot]com. Include your full contact details. All reviews will get the “the orange wisdom” and all reviewers who sent a review till 31.12.09 will have the chance to win a trip to Vienna to one of my CSM classes with ScrumCooking!
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Unit Testing, Test Driven Development
October 2nd, 2009 12:17 pm · Scrum
Eine befreundete Veranstaltungsorganisation in Wien, hat ein super Seminar organisiert und DEN Spezialisten fuer Unit Testing nach Wien geholt.
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Studenten aufgepasst!
October 1st, 2009 09:07 am · Scrum
Gesehen in Twitter?
Wir verschenken 3 Trainingsplätze an Studenten - Human Science - Soziologie, Philosophie, Politik, Psychologie oder eben Studies auf dem Weg zu Projektmanagement.
Wie? Email an kd(at)borisgloger.com!
1x CSM in Sao Paulo - das Training läuft und “Gewinner” Bruno ist dabei
1x CSPO 6+7.10. in Berlin
1x Moderationstraining 8+9.10 mit Dieter Rösner in Wien
It’s a gift!
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Scrum.Org | Ken’s new move
September 30th, 2009 03:15 pm · Scrum
Most of you know already that Ken Schwaber resigned from the Scrum Alliance as President. You might also know that Jim Cundiff is not the CEO of the Scrum Alliance anymore. Currently the Scrum Alliance has announced an interims CEO: Lowell Lindstrom.
We will see what will happen in the next days and I am really interested in the discussion we will have in two weeks in Munich.
But … in the same time … Ken started something new:
Scrum.org is staffed by the developers of Scrum and the best Scrum practitioners in the industry. Scrum.org was founded to:
- Help individuals assess their knowledge of Scrum and how to use it.
- Help organizations find the best training courses, coaching, consulting, and topical Q&A sessions to optimize their use of Scrum.
- Help Scrum teams and organizations learn how to optimize their Total Cost of Ownership for systems and products built using Scrum.
- Initiate innovative programs, such as the Scrum Developer, to accelerate the effectiveness of Scrum.
Scrum.org has only top-drawer facilities and skills aimed to help those who are dead serious about competing in the product and systems development marketplace.
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Scrum Tools | 2009
March 1st, 2009 06:55 pm · Scrum, ScrumTools, checked
Scrum Tools are a topic that is very important for the readers of my blog. We will continue to write reviews every couple of weeks this year.
Scrum Tools | Reviews to date
- Agile Buddy
- Acunote
- Banana Scrum
- FireScrum
- Mingle
- ProjectCards
- Scrumy, Scrumy Pro
- ScrumDesk
- SpiraPlan
- Protonotes
- Taskboard
- tinyPM
- Version One
- XPlanner
- XPLive
About Tools
Other Scrum Tool Compilation Lists
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Scrum Tools | Agile Buddy | Review
February 16th, 2009 12:31 am · Scrum, checked
“Simplifying the Agile project management”. That’s the Agile Buddy catch phrase. As you can see Agile Buddy is a tool to manage agile project. It runs on the web and was developed by Brightspark. It has a good look and feeling, with the main features organized in tabs. There is a free trial available if you want to take a look at it before you buy it.
First Steps
To start using Agile Buddy we need to create a Product register, then you can start creating your backlog. There is no need to create releases or iterations upfront. You are free to create as many stories as you like with minimum data and fill that when it is more appropriate. It´s possible to define a great amount of information like source, business value or risk. These properties do not have much impact on the story progression into the project being just informative properties, but when it comes to the real deal (size, priority) Agile Buddy does have some little problems that are so common in most of the tools. Speaking first about the prioritization process, Agile Buddy brings us a range of 5 possible values to define a story priority, from blocker to minor. This will lead us to the well known problem of having different stories with the same priority, which can be OK if we talk about the bottom of a big backlog, but it’s definitively a problem to the stories on the top of the backlog, as I said in previous reviews a simple ordination will prevent this kind of problems. On the estimation feature, I enjoy the fact that the use of the word size defines the story estimate. Agile Buddy comes with an estimation screen that is useful on estimation meetings providing a quick way to estimate a great amount of stories. Another good point is the use of the Fibonacci-like scale, the most popular scale on agile projects, but unfortunately this feature isn’t problem free. The major problem is that you can only work on unestimated stories, so you can not alter the size of a story through this screen. If you need to do that you have to edit a story and then set a new size. The funny thing is on the story edit screen you can set nay value to the size, not limited by the Fibonacci scale, this is a bit confusing and should be fixed on future releases of the product.
Planning
On the planning part, Agile Buddy gives us two features, Release Planning and Iteration Planning. To be able to do your iteration planning you are obligated to do your release planning first. The release iteration is basically an assignment screen, where you can say which stories will be on the next release. There’s no much more of it, maybe the feature would get a real boost if you could access some information about the development teams capacity or the application could provide some sort of projections about how many iterations it’s going to take until the release is ready and how the decisions of putting in a story or not will affect the schedule. The iteration planning works the same way,you just need to choose which stories will be part of your iteration. The difference is that only stories that were previously assigned to be part of the release will be available this time. After assigning the stories it’s a good moment to create your tasks for each one of them. Unfortunately you have the leave the planning screen to do that and access the Task option on the Create menu and again you see another common problem. You have to estimate your task in hours. So if you don’t want to do that, you can use the idea of one-hour-to-everything, so you can have a burndown chart to show. At least you can create several tasks without having to access the Create menu again, this speeds up things a little, but it would be even better if you could do this in the story context.
Running a Sprint
There is no specific feature to use to update the tasks and stories status on a daily basis like a task board. The Track screen is the most close to this. There’s a track screen for the whole project, for the release and the iteration. On the release track, you can see release backlog with the status of the stories and a Story burnup chart, where you can see how many story points are completed during the release. On the iteration track you can see the selected product backlog (stories) with the sprint backlog (tasks) and a burndown chart to the task hours. You can also update the status of the end and the stories as well.
Conclusion
Although Agile Buddy is an easy to use and learning tool, it suffers from the same problems many tools do. Agile Buddy covers only basic features and doesn’t bring any innovation and maybe these features are not enough to justify their price, maybe on the next version.
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Scrum Tools | ScrumDesk | Review
November 30th, 2008 08:16 pm · Scrum
ScrumDesk is high visual tool created by Torin, a company from Slovak Republic, to help us manage projects with Scrum. Torin brougth to us a very distinct tool, with different ways to organize the features and as said earlier with a special care to visual solutions.
Getting Started
ScrumDesk organizes the features on a bar at the top, on the left side you can access the main features, on the center you can find options to maintain the objects like, stories, task, etc. Then you can find viewing options to the current feature. At first it can looks a little bit confusing, but as soon as you understand their mechanics you can enjoy a fast access to almost everything you need to do in ScrumDesk.
ScrumDesk provides many views of your backlog, you can see it as a grid, as a desk with cards, etc. The desk view is really good, to create a new story, just click on the New option on the center menu and Scrum Desk will show a new card for you, and you can edit it the way you like, Story Name, Detail, Card color, etc. To estimate your stories ScrumDesk uses the Fibonacci based scale to define the Effort property. This scale is most used to Planning Poker Cards, if you don’t have the cards the ScrumDesk comes with a Planning Poker module to help the teams to achieve some collective estimates. The prioritization can be define by the Importance property, the importance is a numeric value with no limit. It’s an easy way to define the prioritization and makes possible to define a different number to each story, but if you have a long backlog it can become a slow and confusing way to define the prioritization.
Planning
Once you have your backlog in place, estimated and prioritaized, it’s time to plan your sprints. To create a sprint you just need to define a name a start date and end date. At the planning feature you can access all story cards from your backlog not assinged to a sprint and just drag them and drop in the new sprint area. Very quickly , very visual way, it works fine. Once you have define your Selected Product Backlog for the sprint, it’s now a good time to create your task, you could have created it anytime before that, but it makes more sense to worry about the tasks on this moment of the sprint. To create new tasks just go to a story card details and use the Tasks area, you can estimate the tasks if you like or assing to someone, as I said on prevous reviews, I don’t recomend any of this two features. ScrumDesk also provide a small burndonw chart for the story. This can be a little unusual for mos teams.
Running a Sprint
After the planning phase is done, the team starts working and ScrumDesk comes with a cool taskboard where drag and drop the task to update their status. Instead of the three usual columns (ToDo, In Progress, Done), they choose to use four (ToDo, Checked Out, Solved, Completed). This chance doesn’t bring any kind of improvment, just create a additional step to complete a task that many teams will skip. During the sprint you can register the impedments that came along on the Impediment Backlog anytime you need, the problem is the impediments are deeply connected with a story, so to create a new impediment you have to do it on the Story detail feature, witch may not be the best solution if you a have a more general impediment, but once they are created you can access them all on a single view.
Tracking and More
On the Reports screen, ScrumDesk provides a lot of tracking features, like the Burndown chart, a Velocity Chart, a Parking Lot chart, and a TimeSheet. All this are very well build and can provide some good visual help to track the projects. There’s a Restropective tool as well, but is more of a poll tool where people can present ideas and the others the vote for that. Besides all this ScrumDesk cames with good extra features like a BugTrack Integration, Communications tool team members and more.
Conclusion
ScrumDesk is a big tool with many details and it’s not possible to cover them all on this review, but you can see that it’s a tool that can compete with the most known ones in the market and for the amount of features they provide the price it’s not high as some people may expect. ScrumDesk have a good set of features that covers the basic needs a scrum team. That’s some good ideas that came up a little short, like the Impediment backlog and Restrospective tool. But if you look for a high tech tool, ScrumDesk is one that you can consider. Btw - did I say, that I like the colors ScrumDesk uses?
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I got some very good comments from the makers of ScrumDesk:
Usability notes
A new story can be created in Desk view simply by double-click. Story will be created on the clicked place.
Fibonacci scale
ScrumDesk is using Fibonacci scale, but it is not tied to it. You can enter your own value of course.
Prioritization
You are right about problems with manual entering the priority. We have to make this feature better.
Story burn down chart
It can be unusual. Maybe it is against the agile principle (as I understand it) – „do not track the story, track the result“. But, top priority client requested us to see the progres of the story.
TaskBoard - Solved state
When I have been thinking about the task board, I studied many real task board pictures available on the web. Many of them contained column „Ready for Acceptance“, „Ready for Test“.
We made a small research and named this state as „Solved“ – story is developed, it have to be accpeted or tested now.
This state can be skipped, so you can complete task directly. It is an optional state.
Impediments
The release developed currently doesn’t connect impediment with the story.
Retrospective
We are understanding the retrospective as a board containing ideas (what was good, what was wrong,…). The poll for best ideas is similar to poll in Mike Cohn’s book.
→ 5 CommentsTags:
Product Backlog | Templates | Scrum Tools
July 1st, 2008 04:25 am · Scrum
- Henrik Knieberg allowed me to share his Version of an Excel Product Backlog template with you: Index Card Generator.
- Danielo Bardusco shared a very nice Excel based Product Backlog template with us: Danielos Barduscos Backlog Template.
- I got a very interesting case study from the Scrum Desk people: Scrum Desk Case Study.
- I forgot to mention the most impressive open source tool I found: FireScrum
- Bas Voode has also a Backlog Link collection.
- I found another Sprint Backlog Excel sheet: Excel Sheet - Sprint Backlog.
- A list of reviews of Scrum Tools
→ 5 CommentsTags:
Trainings
May 1st, 2008 05:51 pm · Scrum
A 2 days ScrumMaster Training will clarify all aspects of Scrum. You will experience what Scrum really is.
Get to know the hard facts and the knowledge inbetween to have a clear understanding about how to implement Scrum in your projects. Listen to real world stories, who is using Scrum, how was it implemented, what are pitfalls to avoid. Get to know experiences from other participants and discuss your questions in teams. All this blended with far sighted views of how we will work together in the future - with the help of Scrum?
Read more: New Examination Process • Training Agenda DE
Certified ScrumMaster Class
12 November 2009 - 13 November 2009 | Frankfurt, Germany
Location: Frankfurt, Germany
Venue: 25hours Hotel Frankfurt tailored by Levi's
Address: Niddastraße 58, 60329 Frankfurt, Germany
Trainer: Boris Gloger
Cost: 1400 Euro, excl. VAT, incl. ScrumAlliance examination fee
14 December 2009 - 15 December 2009 | Munich, Germany
Location: Munich, Germany
Venue: TNG
Address: Betastraße 13a, 85774 Unterföhring, Germany
Trainer: Boris Gloger
Cost: 1400 Euro, excl. VAT
25 January 2010 - 26 January 2010 | Wien, Austria
Location: Wien, Austria
Venue: Palais Palffy
Address: Josefsplatz9 , 1010 Wien, Austria
Trainer: Boris Gloger
Cost: 1650 Euro, excl. VAT, incl. ScrumAlliance examination fee
08 February 2010 - 09 February 2010 | Munich, Germany
Location: Munich, Germany
Venue: TNG
Address: Betastraße 13a, 85774 Unterföhring, Germany
Trainer: Boris Gloger
Cost: 1400 Euro, excl. VAT
15 March 2010 - 16 March 2010 | Wien, Austria
Location: Wien, Austria
Venue: Lindner am Belvedere
Address: Am Rennweg 3, 1030 Wien, Austria
Trainer: Boris Gloger
Cost: 1650 Euro, excl. VAT
12 April 2010 - 13 April 2010 | Munich, Germany
Location: Munich, Germany
Venue: TNG
Address: Betastraße 13a, 85774 Unterföhring, Germany
Trainer: Boris Gloger
Cost: 1400 Euro, excl. VAT
A public training class does have a huge benefit. You work with people from different companies. You share a lot of experiences, you learn from different companies and you learn to know new people. If you don’t find a suitable date/place or if you are a firm/group of people who would like to have a inhouse training, please contact us directly office(at)borisgloger.com.
→ 22 CommentsTags:
“Level of Done” is not “Level of Professionalism”
October 26th, 2009 09:12 am · English, Methods, Organizational Scrum, Professional Software Delivery, Scrum, checked
Nothing is more misunderstood than the term “Level of Done” in Scrum. On the first glance Mitch [1] did a great job. And when I read this ideas a year ago I was flabbergasted. Wow - why did I had never worked with my teams on this. I must have been an idiot and I really wanted to implement these ideas in my consulting praxis. But I never did. I felt bad about this.
All people in the Scrum community around me, started to talk about the importance of the “Level of Done”, and how difficult it is to negotiate this with the Product Owner. I was again worrying. Do I do something wrong? Is it really possible not to work with your team on this? But something in me was blocked. On a sunny day in Vienna, sitting in my favorite breakfast location, it made suddenly “click!”
What people like Mitch [1], Dhaval [2] and Myank [3] sell as “Definition of Done” is not the “Definition of Done”. They found super cool ways to help people to determine on what maturity level either their developers can develop and/or at what maturity level the organization has established the code production.
To say it in more simple words: They found very nice ways to help development organizations to justify that they are not able to create potential shippable product increments at the end of a sprint. Sophisticated lists or even phrase like “Each team should collaborate and come up with the definition that suits its unique environment.” [3] are leading into the wrong direction. They make on one side transparent that this organization is not able to deliver potential product increments, but on the other side they do not help to change this.
Imagine a car manufacturer would tell his customers that the “Level of Done” he can produce is testable, without checks. The world of production does not work this way. They produce results.
“Level of Done” was never meant to be “Level of Professionalism”. Unfortunately it was understood this way. “Level of Done” was meant to tell to everybody on what level the product increment is ready. Finished on the developers machine, finished on the test machine, finished on the system integration machine, deployed to pre-production, or deployed to production. THIS WAS MEANT TO BE “LEVEL OF DONE”.
And this is the only thing you can negotiate with the PO. To talk about if we have “updated our architecture diagrams” or “operational procedure guides updated” [1] was not meant by this term.
It is very sad, that we in our industry really need to worry if teams do their jobs professionally. That Scrum Coaches need to help professional software developers to do their job was never the intention. But unfortunately we need to do this.
—
[1] Mitch Lacey, How do we know that we are done? http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/107-how-do-we-know-when-we-are-done
[2] Dhaval Pachal, What is the definition of Done? http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/105
[3] Myank Gupta, http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/106-definition-of-done-a-reference
[4] Michael Dubakov, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/170009/your-scrum-definition-of-done
→ 1 CommentTags:
Trainings
May 1st, 2008 05:51 pm · Scrum
A 2 days ScrumMaster Training will clarify all aspects of Scrum. You will experience what Scrum really is.
Get to know the hard facts and the knowledge inbetween to have a clear understanding about how to implement Scrum in your projects. Listen to real world stories, who is using Scrum, how was it implemented, what are pitfalls to avoid. Get to know experiences from other participants and discuss your questions in teams. All this blended with far sighted views of how we will work together in the future - with the help of Scrum?
Read more: New Examination Process • Training Agenda DE
Certified ScrumMaster Class
12 November 2009 - 13 November 2009 | Frankfurt, Germany
Location: Frankfurt, Germany
Venue: 25hours Hotel Frankfurt tailored by Levi's
Address: Niddastraße 58, 60329 Frankfurt, Germany
Trainer: Boris Gloger
Cost: 1400 Euro, excl. VAT, incl. ScrumAlliance examination fee
14 December 2009 - 15 December 2009 | Munich, Germany
Location: Munich, Germany
Venue: TNG
Address: Betastraße 13a, 85774 Unterföhring, Germany
Trainer: Boris Gloger
Cost: 1400 Euro, excl. VAT
25 January 2010 - 26 January 2010 | Wien, Austria
Location: Wien, Austria
Venue: Palais Palffy
Address: Josefsplatz9 , 1010 Wien, Austria
Trainer: Boris Gloger
Cost: 1650 Euro, excl. VAT, incl. ScrumAlliance examination fee
08 February 2010 - 09 February 2010 | Munich, Germany
Location: Munich, Germany
Venue: TNG
Address: Betastraße 13a, 85774 Unterföhring, Germany
Trainer: Boris Gloger
Cost: 1400 Euro, excl. VAT
15 March 2010 - 16 March 2010 | Wien, Austria
Location: Wien, Austria
Venue: Lindner am Belvedere
Address: Am Rennweg 3, 1030 Wien, Austria
Trainer: Boris Gloger
Cost: 1650 Euro, excl. VAT
12 April 2010 - 13 April 2010 | Munich, Germany
Location: Munich, Germany
Venue: TNG
Address: Betastraße 13a, 85774 Unterföhring, Germany
Trainer: Boris Gloger
Cost: 1400 Euro, excl. VAT
A public training class does have a huge benefit. You work with people from different companies. You share a lot of experiences, you learn from different companies and you learn to know new people. If you don’t find a suitable date/place or if you are a firm/group of people who would like to have a inhouse training, please contact us directly office(at)borisgloger.com.
→ 22 CommentsTags:
A game to bring Customers and Product Owners Together
October 25th, 2009 08:33 pm · English, Product Owner, Scrum, ScrumTools, checked
Tobias Mayer played with us an innovation game called Speedboat. This game helps people to work on new product ideas together. Have fun with this 5 minute video.
This game was invented by Luke Hohmann. And it is fun to play.
→ 2 CommentsTags:
Scrum Tools | 2009
March 1st, 2009 06:55 pm · Scrum, ScrumTools, checked
Scrum Tools are a topic that is very important for the readers of my blog. We will continue to write reviews every couple of weeks this year.
Scrum Tools | Reviews to date
- Agile Buddy
- Acunote
- Banana Scrum
- FireScrum
- Mingle
- ProjectCards
- Scrumy, Scrumy Pro
- ScrumDesk
- SpiraPlan
- Protonotes
- Taskboard
- tinyPM
- Version One
- XPlanner
- XPLive
About Tools
Other Scrum Tool Compilation Lists
→ 38 CommentsTags:
Estimation of Story Points
September 9th, 2009 07:07 am · Scrum
It was such a cool idea. The software development industry failed to deliver reliable estimates of tasks. So why not estimate features, or stories with an arbitrary unit. Story Points had been born.
- The basic idea is to create a reference item and then base all estimates as a relation to this reference item. A wonderful approach, because all measurements systems of the world are based on this basic idea. Everything is measured in units that represents a relation to a defined reference.
- What we measure is the SIZE of a Story = Functionality. So we pick a Functionality (any) and then we compare this one with the one we want to measure.
- We say B is x times as big as B.
- DID YOU GET THIS!? …. WE DO NOT… NOT… NOT… NOT COMPARE EFFORT. WE DO NOT ESTIMATE THE EFFORT THAT IS NECESSARY TO BUILD B WITH THE EFFORT THAT IS NECESSARY TO BUILD A.
- We estimate the relation between … the distance between … functionality A and B.
- The XP Gurus 5 years ago tried to explain this by saying. Functionality B is x-times MORE COMPLEX than Functionality B.
- AND then it happend: Developers heard in their minds: To DEVELOP functionality B is x times more complex than functionality B. BUT THIS WAS NOT THE INTENTION.
- Now you are back to effort estimation on task level. And you have the same problem again. Again you talk about an effort to build something. But this is not possible as we can not estimate the effort. (Not even Taylor estimated the effort he measured the effort! … -> well this leads to the next thought. You will see later.)
Repetition: We compare the complexity of a functionality B with the reference complexity of functionality A.
(Read more on Friday)
→ 9 CommentsTags:
