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Questions from Real Professional Life !

Last post 06:26 pm May 5, 2017 by Jason Jafarian
4 replies
11:42 pm May 3, 2017

I have some questions, who can help me, please ?

1) Our sprint has 2 weeks. We work for a Bank, and we have been working with Devops Integration. Sometimes, we identify new histories or tasks, but the Scrum Master doesn't allow to insert in the SPRINT because he thinks the statistic graphs will show them and it would not be good because the client will see it and it shows histories don't previewed. A part of team think is needed to put the real situation, and now ? Insert or not the new histories ?

2) Many times I said to combine with client the histories for next Sprint. If we have 2 weeks it is needed to do it in the second week, but Product Owner didn't provide them, and we have the Sprint Planning meeting we know the histories to work without to know the complex or time to do it. So I think everything is wrong ! Tell me a suggestion or am I wrong ?


05:41 am May 5, 2017

Looks like there is a violation of the most important rule of Scrum, transparency. Without transparency there always would be a false sense of achievement to the stakeholders, in this case I understand that its technical debt your team need to deal with. And next, no one, no one tells Dev team what to do.

As a team you need to raise it as in impediment to Scrum master and maybe again in retrospective.


08:46 am May 5, 2017

I am preparing for PSM1 certification. have gone through Scrum guides,open scrum assessment. Can any one please suggest what other material i should refer before i take up the assessment


12:55 pm May 5, 2017

There seem to be a lot of issues here and there is probably a need for Scrum training across the team. As a minimum though, I suggest going through the Scrum Guide carefully. Pay particular attention to the Product Backlog and how it is refined, the Sprint Backlog and how it is planned, and who owns each respective artifact. 


06:26 pm May 5, 2017

I agree with Ian that this can probably be boiled down to a Backlog issue.  If your backlogs aren't kept up-to-date, regularly refined, and readily accessible, then these sorts of issues will develop naturally.  Clear training in this area will probably really help your team get back on track.

But I'd also like to address the point about metrics in your first question.  Metrics can be a fantastic team tool, but they're also frequently misused and misunderstood.  Unlike in traditional Project Management where Earned Value Analysis and Ghant Charts are used to plan and monitor projects, Agile methodologies use metrics to rapidly identify problems.  That difference isn't always clearly identified.

My advice would be that the team (SM, PO and Client included) sit down and clarify how they want to use metrics like Story Points and Velocity, and what these measures actually represent within the team.  The focus of Scrum should be on maximizing value, not maximizing a scorecard.


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