CMSI 543 / SYEG 557: Welcome to Week 13

This Week's Class Agenda

Twenty Question Scrum Review

Here are 20 questions about Scrum which will help you review and retain your knowledge about general Agile topics! The answers are available here, but try to answer them without looking first.

  1. The product backlog should be ordered on the basis of:
    1. The value of the items being delivered
    2. The complexity of the items being delivered
    3. The size of the items being delivered
    4. The risk associated with the items
    5. The Scrum Team's choices
  2. When is a Sprint Retrospective ceremony performed?
    1. Whenever the team suggests
    2. At the end of each Sprint
    3. Whenever needed
    4. Whenever the Product Owner suggests
    5. Whenever the Scrum Master suggests
  3. What should a Development Team do during a Sprint Planning meeting when they have realized that they have selected more than the items they can complete in a Sprint?
    1. Get more developers onboard
    2. Seek help from the other Scrum Team Members
    3. Work overtime
    4. Inform the Product Owner
    5. Remove some of the Sprint Backlog Items
  4. What are the main responsibilities of a self-organizing development team?
    1. Develop the Sprint Backlog items
    2. Estimate the items to be picked up for the upcoming Sprint
    3. Monitor the Project's performance and send a report to stakeholders
    4. Create new Product Backlog items
    5. Tasking the current Sprint Items
  5. What are the main responsibilities of a Scrum Master?
    1. Removing Impediments
    2. Facilitating meetings as and when they are requested
    3. Helping the Product Owner order the Product Backlog
    4. Consulting the Development Team and Product Owner
    5. Bridging the Gap between the Team and the Customer
  6. What is the significance of determining a Definition of Done?
    1. Determines the objective behind each sprint
    2. Determines the number of tasks being completed for each Sprint Backlog item
    3. Increases Transparency
    4. Delivered Increments are more effective and potentially releasable
    5. Develops a common understanding amongst all the team members as to what all needs to be completed to mark every item complete
  7. What is a Sprint Review?
    1. An activity to Introspect and Adapt
    2. An activity to improve Scrum Processes
    3. An activity to seek approval for the work done
    4. An activity to plan for the next Sprint
    5. An activity to plan for the release
  8. Who should ALWAYS attend the Daily Standup meeting?
    1. The Development Team
    2. The Scrum Team
    3. The Development Team and the Product Owner
    4. The Development Team and the Scrum Master
    5. The Scrum Team and the Stakeholders
  9. What should be the size of the Development Team?
    1. 5 ± 3
    2. 5 ± 4
    3. 6 ± 4
    4. 6 ± 3
    5. 6 ± 2
  10. Which of the following activities is not timeboxed?
    1. Sprint Retrospective
    2. Sprint
    3. Product Backlog Refinement
    4. Daily Scrum
    5. Sprint Review
  11. Which of the following is delivered at the end of the Sprint?
    1. A document containing test cases for the current sprint
    2. An architectural design of the solution
    3. An increment of Done software
    4. Wireframes designs for User Interface
  12. In an Agile environment, what is the main responsibility of a tester?
    1. To create test scenarios and test cases
    2. To find bugs/defects
    3. To create automation scripts
    4. To send test execution reports to the stakeholders
    5. There is no role as a Tester in Scrum
  13. When can a Sprint be canceled?
    1. When the Sprint items are no longer needed
    2. A sprint can never be canceled
    3. When development is unable to complete the work
    4. When information that is required to start the development is not available
    5. Whenever the Product Owner says
  14. Who is responsible for measuring the Project's performance?
    1. The Scrum Master
    2. The Delivery Manager
    3. The Product Owner
    4. The Development Team
    5. The Scrum Team
  15. What does a BurnDown Chart display?
    1. Project Progress
    2. Amount of remaining work with respect to time
    3. The velocity of the team
    4. The capacity of the team members
    5. How many more items can be picked up in a Sprint
  16. In Scrum, when is a Sprint Over?
    1. When all the Sprint Backlog Items are completed
    2. When the Product Owner suggests
    3. When all the Sprint Backlog tasks are completed
    4. When the final testing is completed
    5. When the time box expires
  17. What is done during a Sprint Review Meeting?
    1. Demo of the Increment
    2. The team discusses improvements that can be applied to upcoming sprints
    3. The team presents the Project's performance to the Stakeholders
    4. The team inspects progress towards the Sprint Goal
    5. The team discusses the architectural and technical aspects of the project
  18. What is meant by a Cross-Functional Development Team?
    1. Each of the Development Team members should be cross-functional
    2. The developers should able to create test cases and execute them
    3. The Development Team should collaborate with other Development Teams
    4. The Development Team consist of Developers and Testers
    5. The Development Team should have all the skills necessary to deliver the Done Increment
  19. What happens when all the Sprint Items cannot be completed?
    1. The Sprint should be extended
    2. The Sprint ends with the done items
    3. The Sprint should be canceled
    4. The unfinished Sprint items should be removed from the Sprint Backlog
    5. The unfinished items should be placed at the start of the next sprint
  20. What activities are a part of Product Backlog Refinement?
    1. Estimating the Product Backlog Items
    2. Ordering of the Product Backlog Items
    3. Creating the Definition of Done
    4. Creation of tasks
    5. Brainstorming on the Product Backlog Items

Other Agile Applications

One thing that is important to understand is that successful product deployment DOES NOT mean the end of the project. There are still other activities which will be ongoing, not only in the organization as a whole, but with that product in particular. Such additional activities as maintenance, support, upgrades, and marketing new features can keep a product on the boards for a while, along with the team members needed to supoort those activities.

One thing that is critical to success of this product afterlife is, as always, customer involvement. We need to be focused on what the customers are looking for, so that we can provide continuing business value with the product, or even extend that product into new areas. We also need to be on the lookout for NEW customers, and we must keep tabs on the marketplace in general, so that our product doesn't become obsolete before its time, and that it isn't Overcome By Events [OBE]. We must ensure we are building the right thing.

Two activities can help with this effort: discovery, which is about listening to customers and other [possible] stakeholders, and validation, which is about confirming what you've learned during discovery.

Discovery

The most common way of finding out more about what customers and others want and need is to conduct an interview. In this activity, the Product Owner should spend time with the stakeholders, asking them some open-ended questions about what they feel their challenges are, or what particular problems they would like to solve. The questions should be designed to get the stakeholders to talk, to open up about what they feel is important, and reveal what are known as their pain points.

It is also critical during this activity to carefully select the members of the panel. You want various viewpoints from different sources. Existing customers should definitely be included, since they are familiar with your product's strengths and weaknesses. You should also include potential customers who will help your product expand and remain relevant in the market. Be careful about including people who have complaints or gripes about your products; although they can provide useful intel, their perspective may not be focused on product improvement to the extent that this data-gathering activity requires. While it is good to have a dissenting opinion, the discovery should maintain a positive focus on meaningful improvements in the context of the marketplace, not just assuaging a particular user's gripe about the product.

Validation

In this case, the term validation isn't strictly about building the right thing as if from a testing point of view, but rather from a marketplace point of view. One of the best [and most common] ways to do this is through use of a survey.

The trick with surveys is to make sure you have a large enough sample so that you get statistically significant results. Typical survey response rates are between 10% and 30%, so you need to allocate sufficient time and resources [incentives]. Many companies conduct surveys only with their existing customers. However, even though they are most likely to respond since they have knowledge of the product, but they don't represent a broad enough population to ensure meaningful results in all cases. Remember that the Discovery phase produces qualitative information, and the Validation phase produces quantitative information. Feelings vs. numbers.

Good Product Owners will rely on a wide set of resources, including market data from known companies such as Garner.com and Forrester.com who invest significant time and resources to gather statistically significant data about many different markets.

Agile Marketing

The Agile Philosophy has been adopted by Marketing as well. There are seven values in the Agile Marketing Manifesto, as follows:

Some Video Links to Remember

Here are links to some videos that we've seen this semester, as well as some new ones, so that you can review and have access to them for future reference.

  1. Agile is……
  2. Story of Scrum vs. Kanban
  3. Free Scrum Vs. Kanban Cheat Sheet
  4. Scrum in Seven Minutes!
    [Note: stop at the 7 minute mark to avoid the sales pitch…]
  5. Sprint Planning in Scrum
  6. Agile Product Ownership
  7. Story Points — What's the Point?

Tonight's Discussion

Now that we've seen the videos, get into your project groups discuss what you feel is the most important, surprising, or noteworthy concept of the videos you saw. Here are some questions to get your discussion started. After 10 minutes or so, we'll return to the main zoom room to hear some of your answers.