Scrum - jeff sutherland

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  • Orient, Observe, Decide, Act
  • Great Teams are cross-functional, autonomous, and empowered
  • Shu Ha Ri: First, learn the forms and the rules, and once you've mastered them make innovations. In a heightened state of mastery, discard the forms and just *be.

Teams

  • Improving team performance has much more impact than improving individual performance
  • A team must have every skill needed to complete the task
  • Small teams achieve more than big teams (7 seems to be the magical numbers)

Time

  • Break down work into tasks that can be accomplished in small sets of time, for example 1 week, 2 weeks, etc. You can call that a Sprint
  • At the end of each sprint, have something that can be demoed: showed, driven, etc.
  • Everyone knows everything. Saturate the communication channeles so everyone has the same information to make decisions.
  • Daily check-in is more than enough.

Waste

  • In Japanese:
    • muri: waste through unreasonableness
    • mura: waste through inconsistency
    • muda: waste through outcomes
  • In PDCA:
    • Plan: avoid muri
    • Do: avoid mura
    • Check: avoid muda
    • Act: do all that
  • Multitasking does not increase productivity. The secret of Scrum is that it allows people to focus.
  • Half-done is not done at all. Focus, finish, move on.

Planning

  • User story: As a <who/role>, I want (or need) < what > so that < why/business value >
    • As a starship captain I want a system that automatically logs dates so that I can focus on the important observations.
  • System story: <Action verb> <subject> so that <who> gets <what> or <goal> is achieved.
    • As a <Light beer drinker>, I want <a beer with lower alcohol by volume ABV> so that <I will consume fewer calories>
    • <Run the beer in tank three> <through the evaporator> so that <a lower abv> is achieved.
  • Only plan what you need. Set a direction and goal, but plans are like maps: an imperfect representation of the terrain.
  • We are very bad at estimating, so don't try to estimate without knowledge.
  • Planning Poker

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