How to Scrum

We discuss the parts of the scrum process that we’re supposed to pay attention to while Allen pronounces the m, Michael doesn’t, and Joe skips the word altogether.

If you’re reading this episode’s show notes via your podcast player, just know that you can find this episode’s show notes at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode156. Stop by, check it out, and join the conversation.

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Survey Says

News

• Hey, we finally updated the Resources page. It only took a couple years.
• Apparently we don’t understand the purpose of the scrum during rugby. (Wikipedia)

@CodingBlocks hi chaps! Big fan of the show! Still working thru the backlog. As for the latest episode, as a kiwi I have to tell you what a scrum really is, or show you some footage This is a scrum! https://t.co/poaROdr2DE

— David Stevenson (@fxgai) March 29, 2021

Standup Time

User Stories

• A user story is a detailed, valuable chunk of work that can be completed in a sprint.\
• Use the INVEST mnemonic created by Bill Wake:
  • I = Independent – the story should be able to be completed without any dependencies on another story
  • N = Negotiable – the story isn’t set in stone – it should have the ability to be modified if needed
  • V = Valuable – the story must deliver value to the stakeholder
  • E = Estimable – you must be able to estimate the story
  • S = Small – you should be able to estimate within a reasonable amount of accuracy and completed within a single sprint
  • T = Testable – the story must have criteria that allow it to be testable

Stories Should be Written in a Format Very Much Like…

“As a _____, I want _____ so that _____.”, like
“As a user, I want MFA in the user profile so I can securely log into my account” for a functional story, or
“As a developer, I want to update our version of Kubernetes so we have better system metrics” for a nonfunctional story.

Stories Must have Acceptance Criteria

• Each story has it’s own UNIQUE acceptance criteria.
• For the MFA story, the acceptance criteria might be:\
  • Token is captured and saved.
  • Verification of code completed successfully.
  • Login works with new MFA.
• The acceptance criteria defines what “done” actually means for the story.

Set up Team Boundaries

• Define “done”.
  • Same requirement for ALL stories:
    • Must be tested in QA environment,
    • Must have test coverage for new methods.
• Backlog prioritization or “grooming”.
  • Must constantly be ordered by value, typically by the project owner.
• Define sprint cadence
  • Usually 1-4 weeks in length, 2-3 is probably best.
  • Two weeks seems to be what most choose simply because it sort of forces a bit of urgency on you.

Estimates

• Actual estimation, “how many hours will a task take?”
• Relative estimation, “I think this task will take 2x as long as this other ticket.”
• SCRUM uses both, user stories are compared to each other in relative fashion.
• By doing it this way, it lets external stakeholders know that it’s an estimate and not a commitment.
• Story points are used to convey relative sizes.
• Estimation is supposed to be lightweight and fast.

Roadmap and Release Plan

• The roadmap shows when themes will be worked on during the timeframe.\
  • You should be able to have a calendar and map your themes across that calendar and in an order that makes sense for getting a functional system.
• Just because you should have completed, functional components at the end of each sprint, based on the user stories, that doesn’t mean you’re releasing that feature to your customer. It may take several sprints before you’ve completed a releasable feature.
• It will take several sprints to find out what a team’s stabilized velocity is, meaning that the team will be able to decently predict how many story points they can complete in a given sprint.

Filling up the Sprint

• Decide how many points you’ll have for a sprint.
• Determine how many sprints before you can release the MVP.
• Fill up the sprints as full as possible in priority order UNLESS the next priority story would overflow the sprint.
  • Simple example, let’s say your sprint will have 10 points and you have the following stories:
    Story A – 3 points
    Story B – 5 points
    Story C – 8 points
    Story D – 2 points
  • Your sprints might look like:
    Sprint 1 – A (3) B(5), D(2) = 10 points
    Sprint 2 – C (8)
  • Story C got bumped to Sprint 2 because the goal is to maximize the amount of work that can be completed in a given sprint in priority order, as much as possible.
• The roadmap is an estimate of when the team will complete the stories and should be updated at the end of each sprint. In other words, the roadmap is a living document.

Sprint Planning

• This is done at the beginning of each sprint.
• Attendees – all developers, scrum master, project owner.
• Project owner should have already prioritized the stories in the backlog.
• The goal of the planning meeting is to ensure all involved understand the stories and acceptance criteria.
  • Also make sure the overarching definition of “done” is posted as a reminder.
• Absolutely plan for a Q&A session.
  • Crucial to make sure any misunderstandings of the stories are cleared here.
• Next the stories are broken down into specific tasks. These tasks are given actual estimates in time.
  • Once this is completed, you need to verify that the team has enough capacity to complete the tasks and stories in the sprint.
    • In general, each team member can only complete 6 hours of actual work per day on average.
• Each person is then asked whether they commit to the work in the sprint.
  • Must give a “yes” or “no” and why.
    • If someone can’t commit with good reason, the the project owner and team need to work together to modify the sprint so that everyone can commit. This is a highly collaborative part of scrum planning.

Stakeholder Feedback

• Information radiators are used to post whatever you think will help inform the stakeholders of the progress, be it a task board or burn down chart.

Task board

• Lists stories committed to in the sprint.
• Shows the status of any current tasks.
• Lists which tasks have been completed.
  • Swimlanes are typically how these are depicted with lanes like: Story, Not Started, In Progress, Completed.

Sprint burndown chart

• Shows ongoing status of how you’re doing with completing the sprint.

Daily Standup

• The purpose of the standup is the three C’s:\
  • Collaboration,
  • Communication, and
  • Cadence.
• The entire team must join: developers, project owner, QA, scrum master.
• Should occur at the same time each day.
• Each status should just be an overview and light on the details.
• Tasks are moved to a new state during the standup, such as from Not Started to In Progress.
• Stakeholders can come to the scrum but should hold questions until the end.
• Cannot go over 15 minutes. It can be shorter, but should not be longer.
• Each person should answer three questions:
  • What did you do yesterday?,
  • What are you doing today?, and
  • Are there any blockers?
• If you see someone hasn’t made progress in several days, this is a great opportunity to ask to help. This is part of keeping the team members accountable for progressing.
• Blockers are brought up during the meeting as anyone on the team needs to try and step in to help. If the issue hasn’t been resolved by the next day, then it’s the responsibility of the scrum master to try and resolve it, and escalate it further up the chain after that, such as to the project owner and so on, each consecutive day.
• Again, very important, this is just the formal way to keep the entire team aware of the progress. People should be communicating throughout the day to complete whatever tasks they’re working on.

Backlog Refinement

• The backlog is constantly changing as the business requirements change.
  • It is the job of the project owner to be in constant communication with the stakeholders to ensure the backlog represents the most important needs of the business and making sure the stories are prioritized in value order.
  • Stories are constantly being modified, added, or removed.
• Around the midpoint of the sprint, there is usually a 30-60 minute “backlog refinement session” where the team comes together to discuss the changes in the backlog.
  • These new stories can only be added to future sprints.
  • The current sprint commitment cannot be changed once the sprint begins.
  • The importance of this mid-sprint session is the team can ask clarifying questions and will be better prepared for the upcoming sprint planning.
    • This helps the project owner know when there are gaps in the requirements and helps to improve the stories.

Marking a Story Done

• The project owner has the final say making sure all the acceptance criteria has been met.
• There could be another meeting called the “sprint review” where the entire team meets to get signoff on the completed stories.
  • Anything not accepted as done gets reviewed, prioritized, and moved out to another sprint.
    • This can happen when a team discovers new information about a story while working on it during a sprint.
  • The team agrees on what was completed and what can be demonstrated to the stakeholders.

The Demo

• This is a direct communication between the team and the stakeholders and receive feedback.
  • This may result in new stories.
  • Stakeholders may not even want the new feature and that’s OK. It’s better to find out early rather than sinking more time into building something not needed or wanted.
• This is a great opportunity to build a relationship between the team members and the stakeholders.
• This demo also shows the overall progress towards the final goal.
• May not be able to demo at the end of every sprint, but you want to do it as often as possible.

Team Retrospective

• Focus is on team performance, not the product and is facilitated by the scrum master.
• This is a closed door session and must be a safe environment for discussion.
  • Only dedicated team members present and the team norms must be observed
• You want an open dialogue/
• What worked well? Focus on good team collaboration.
• What did not work well? Focus on what you can actually change.
• What can be improved?
  • Put items into an improvement backlog
  • Focus on one or two items in the next sprint
• Start with team successes first!

Resources We Like

• Scrum: The Basics (LinkedIn)
• Manifesto for Agile Software Development (agilemanifesto.org)
• Scrum (rugby) (Wikipedia)
• INVEST (mnemonic) (Wikipedia)
• Excellent examples of how not to write user stories (Twitter)
• The Pragmatic Programmer – How to Estimate (episode 109)
• Why is there a 20 and not 21 in some versions of Planning Poker? (Stack Overflow)

Tip of the Week

• Test your YAML with the Ansible Template Tester (ansible.sivel.net)
• Hellscape by Andromida (Spotify, YouTube)
• Use ALT+LEFT CLICK in Windows Terminal to open a new terminal in split screen mode.
• Learn how to tie the correct knot for every situation! (animatedknots.com)
• Apply zoom levels to each tab independently of other tabs of the same website with Per Tab Zoom. (Chrome web store)
• Nearly every page on GitHub has a keyboard shortcut to perform actions faster. Learn them! (GitHub)
• Speaking of shortcuts, here’s a couple for Visual Studio Code:
  • Use CTRL+P (or CMD+P on a Mac) to find a file by name or path.
  • List (and search) all available commands with CTRL+SHIFT+P (or CMD+SHIFT+P on a … you know).
  • Use CTRL+K M (CMD+K M) to change the current document’s language mode.
• Access your WSL2 filesystem from Windows using special network share: like \\wsl$\ubuntu_instance_name\home\your_username\some_path
  • Docker Desktop: WSL 2 Best practices (Docker)

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