Day 2 started at 9:00 AM in Hotel Breuken, the Netherlands. After an exciting first day, I was ready for a new Sprint!
I forgot to mention a few important things that I had learned the first day, but they are also covered in this post so continue reading 
We started the day with a stand-up meeting. As you might have noticed, the two day course also uses Scrum, eat your own dog food I guess? During the stand-up we were told what the agenda for this day would be. The trainers took the feedback of the retrospective of day one and used that as input for the agenda for day two. The agenda items had already been prioritized and estimated by the trainers.
Our agenda of day two would be:
- Spaghetti Game
- Scrum in Detail
- Selling Agile
- XP Game
- Retrospective: Timeline
Spaghetti Game
After the stand-up the group was invited to the back of the meeting room to play a game called the Spaghetti Game. The point of this game is to show that directive management does not work better than self-organizing teams. If you want to know more about this game LMGTFY.
Scrum in Detail
During day one we covered most of the Scrum basics, but we still had to go into the details of Scrum. According to the trainers we should be able to pass the exam after finishing Scrum in details.
The following three major subjects still needed to be discussed in more detail:
- Scrum roles
- Scrum activities
- Scrum artifacts
Scrum roles
There are three roles that are essential for Scrum:
- Product Owner (PO)
- Scrum Master (SM)
- Team Member (TM)
The Product Owner is the mediator between the team and the rest of the world. The customer and other stakeholders communicate with the team through the Product Owner. It`s not forbidden for people outside of the team to speak with the team, but formal communication should always be through the Product Owner.
The Scrum Master role, when looking at it from a distance, looks really simple. The Scrum Master makes sure that the team uses Scrum correctly and helps the team by removing any blocking issues. But in practice the Scrum Master makes sure that also the outside world also understands why a Scrum project does things the way it does. The Scrum Master makes sure all activities take place, communication is done through the right persons and all activities are timeboxed and executed properly.
Team members in Scrum are people who are dedicated to work on a Sprint. From Sprint to Sprint the team may change, but it is better to keep the team together for a longer period (one or more projects!).
Activities
An important aspect of the Activities in Scrum is that they are all timeboxed. This means that there is a fixed amount of time reserved for a specific activity. The following important activities were covered:
- Preparing a Sprint
- Planning Session 1 and 2
- Sprint Review: important moment for feedback
- Retrospective
Activity: preparing a Sprint
What we had learned from day 1 is that a good preperation of a Sprint is essential! If the Product Owner has not done his homework the Sprint will become one big mess. What I forgot to mention in day one is that the Product Owner relies heavily on the team for getting the Product Backlog estimated properly. We were told that a team will spend about 25% of their time doing estimations for the Product Owner. This can be done whenever the Product Owner needs an estimation or at a fixed time during the day. You can use the planning poker technique for providing estimations.
Summarizing: before you can start a Sprint there needs to be a prioritized and estimated Product Backlog!
Planning Session 1 and 2
There are two planning sessions in Scrum, normally they take place in the first day of a new Sprint. The first planning session is with the team, SM, PO and optionally with stakeholders. The goal is to make sure that the stories for the upcoming Sprint are clear for the team. After this planning session the stakeholders must leave and the team starts the second planning session. During the second planning session the stories are broken down into tasks and the team gives commitment for the stories.
The outcome of the planning sessions is an understood amount of work that is doable according to the team.
Scrum artifacts
There are not a whole lot of artifact described in Scrum, unlike RuP for example. This does not mean that you cannot use other documents and artifacts to support the proces. Scrum descibes the following artifacts:
- Product Backlog
- Sprint Backlog
- Burndown Chart
- Overall Progress Burndown Chart
Product backlog
The product backlog a prioritized list of things to do. The items with the highest priority are on top of the list and are also more detailed. As work progresses the items lower on the list start moving to the top and need to become more detailed. The Product Owner is responsible for making sure this happens.
Sprint backlog
During a sprint there is also a backlog. Items from the Product backlog are moved to the Sprint backlog and are broken down into tasks and put on the Sprint backlog. Again, the Sprint backlog is also prioritized and items that are on top of the Sprint backlog have the highest priority.
The Sprint backlog is typically to be found on the Scrum planning board. It contains the Sprint backlog, unplanned items and Burndown chart.
Burndown Chart
This is a chart that displays the amount of work to do and the time that is left in a Sprint. You can easily see if the team is still on track and will manage to deliver on time.
3×3
Now we finished Scrum in details, we were ready for the Certification exam To demonstrate this, we had to explain the Scrum details in groups. We were given some time to prepare a demonstration of what Scrum means, the 3 groups were assigned one of 3 subjects:
- Scrum Roles: ScrumMaster, ProductOwner, TeamMember
- Scrum Activities: Timeboxes: Sprint, Stand-up, Planning Session I & II, Sprint Review, Retrospective
- Scrum Artifacts: Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Burndown chart
But first lunch, after the lunch break the groups presented their Scrum subject.
Selling Agile
We were given some tactics on how to sell Agile in an organisation. It is important that Agile and Scrum are not a goal on its own, but should actually provide value. In some organisations it might just not work. It also takes some time to get an organisation to adopt Agile and/or Scrum.
The following items were covered:
- money for nothing
- change for free
The XP Game
The last game of the training was the XP game. In this game we were expected to apply Scrum hands-on.
Retrospective: Timeline
Last up, a retrospective technique called Timeline. In this technique you should write down on post-its what you think went well and what should be better, max 3 post-its for each. The post-its should be placed on timeline, representing the Sprint, where you got the feeling things went better or went wrong.
This was the last exercise of this two day training. We ended the training with a group photo.
The Online Exam
Two days after the training I received an email of the Scrum Alliance about the Certified Scrum Master exam. The exam is a multiple choice test to see if you indeed know what Scrum means. I did the test in aproximately 15 minutes and passed it, so I am now a Scrum Master now But I feel like i just covered the basic. To become a real master in Scrum you need to succesfully apply it in projects!
Hi soudmaijer,
Thanks for this beautiful post. Could you plz let me know where did you appear the test. For that do you need to go to the center again?
Hi James,
I got an invitation to do the online exam. The invitation will be sent to you by the company that provides the training.
Kind regards, Stephan
Hi soudmaijer,
Very descriptive and well narrated topic! Got to know about high level overview of SCRUM and exam also!
Hi Soundmaijier,
Really very nice article. Got high level overview.
And it would be really more learning experience if you can share your real life experience after getting Scrum training and after passing scrum exam.
Thanks
Pratik
Hi Soundmaijier,
You explained the basics very clearly. Superb article. Do you have any ebooks?
Hi,
thanks you for the kind words.
As a follow-up on this topic (Scrum) I started reading more about lean software development. I think that it is good to have a broad understand of how to approach problems faced in software development. In my opinion there is much overlap in different methodologies but they all have different ways and tools in achieving their goals. I think the most important tip I can give is to never stop using your brains and discover what works best for you.
You might want to read the following book which I enjoyed reading: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321437381/poppendieckco-20