Self-organized Teams in Scrum

Self-organized Teams in Scrum

It is the people who develop great products or service and not the Scrum or any other production technique. Scrum requires the teams to be motivated, empowered and self-organized. Self-motivated employees accept the responsibility and do not wait for the superiors or managers to delegate or and assign the tasks. Hence they deliver greater value when the teams are self-organized.

Scrum teams prefer “Servant leadership” style of management style where in the leader or the Scrum Master facilitates the work and removes the impediments rather than dominating and closely observing and controlling the Scrum Team functionality.

The chief goals of self-organized Scrum teams are as follows:

Following are the goals of self-organized teams discussed in the SBOK.

   Understand the Project Vision and why the project delivers value to the organization. This emphasizes the need to superior organized goals than individual goals.

   Estimate User Stories during the Approve, Estimate, and Commit User Stories process and assign
tasks to themselves during the Create Sprint Backlog process. This helps them in timely delivery of the projects with minimum errors if not completely error free and in turns the satisfied customers.

   Create tasks independently during the Create Tasks process. Team members take the responsibility of dividing the entire project into tasks which are later moved into sprints.

   Apply and leverage their expertise from being a cross-functional team to work on the tasks during the Create Deliverables process. The team has members from different areas of expertise and hence bring the blend of skills required to develop the deliverables.

   Deliver tangible results which are accepted by the customer and other stakeholders during the Demonstrate and Validate Sprint process.

   Resolve individual problems together by addressing them during Daily Standup Meetings. These meetings help the scrum master to identify the difficulty faced by the team members.

   Clarify any discrepancies or doubts and be open to learning new things. They share their experiences and are socializing quickly and hence communication is established quickly within the team members.

   Upgrade the knowledge and skills on a continuous basis through regular interactions within the team.

   Maintain stability of team members throughout the duration of the project by not changing members, unless unavoidable. 

Visit my other blogs too:-http://scrumsecrets.blogspot.in/2014/10/what-is-agile.html
http://scrumsecrets.blogspot.in/2014/10/why-product-owner-is-important-in-scrum.html

Product Backlog Prioritization

The Scrum aims at delivering maximum business value in a minimum time span. 

One of the most effective tools for delivering maximum value in the short duration of time is prioritization. Scrum, uses Value-based Prioritization as one of the core principles that drives the structure and functionality of the entire Scrum framework-it helps projects benefit through adaptability and iterative development of the product or service. More significantly, Scrum aims at delivering a valuable product or service to the customer on an early and continuous basis.

While prioritizing, following three factors are considered:

1.      Value

2.      Risk or uncertainty

3.      Dependencies

Thus prioritization results in deliverables that satisfies the requirements of the customer with the objective of delivering the maximum business value in the least amount of time. During prioritization risks and various performance issues will be closely analyzed, giving an early visibility regarding various problem areas which would surface later in the project.

The Product Owner is responsible for getting the Product Backlog ready and prioritizing the items in the Product Backlog. Once the Product Owner has received the business requirements from the customer and written these down in the form of workable User Stories, he needs to work with the customer to understand which all requirements are of maximum business value and needs to be accomplished first. Such user stories would take the top spot (in terms of priority) in the product backlog. The Product Backlog items should be ordered in such a way that the requirements with maximum business value would be completed first. Sometimes, a customer may insist all User Stories to be of high priority. While this might be true, even a list of high-priority User Stories needs to be prioritized within the list itself. The Scrum Master and the development team will use the Product Backlog as the basis for planning the Sprints based on the priority of the items listed. The Scrum Team also informs the Product Owner about any dependencies that arise out of implementation. These dependencies must be taken into account during prioritization. Dependencies limit the freedom to prioritize the product backlog and therefore dependencies should be sorted out wherever possible.

You can also visit my other posts:-

http://scrumsecrets.blogspot.in/2014/11/agile-in-product-management.html

http://scrumsecrets.blogspot.in/2014/10/major-responsibilities-of-product-owner.html

Agile in Product Management

Introduction to agile

It is often seen that Agile has been implemented successfully in different projects. But when it comes to Product Management or NPD (New Product Development), many people get sceptical regarding implementation of Agile. Now it has to be understood that Agile is not a methodology which can be used in a cookie cutter way across any organization. A lot of tweaking and customization is required to make it work. So, in product management, a proper assessment is required to see if Agile implementation will improve performance or not.

Here also, we need to see if the following two criteria are being fulfilled or not:

1.       Requirement Volatility : It is important to identify the volatility of requirements and whether working in Sprint will actually improve customer satisfaction, reduce uncertainty and help PM teams become more productive or not. If requirements are fixed in sand and are not dynamic in nature, it will not make any marked improvement even if the teams work in sprint. Also, Agile Product Life Cycle Management involves a lot of new learning, so it needs to be checked if the team will be comfortable in this transition or not.

2.       Frequent customer Interaction: External customers are big stakeholders in any Agile effort. In many product management scenarios, we have seen that customers just give their specifications and just go away for months and months. And finally when they come back for the product, it is completely different from what they expected, because market dynamics change and the expectations change as well. So the biggest benefit is actually to the customers themselves, and this is what the PM team should explain in details to the customers so as to get their buy in. Without their pro-active support, it will not be possible to implement Agile in any way.

If we are talking about New Product Development, then Agile actually becomes even more crucial and important.  

That is because neither the customers nor the PM team has any benchmark to follow. So, frequent discussions and brain storming sessions followed by change in requirements or prototypes will be mandatory for successful NPD. So, it is important to realize that Agile can be implemented successfully in Product Management as well, provided it is understood properly and used in the proper context. Also, management buy in and customer buy in are important components in this scenario, and a good AGILE coach will also be very beneficial.

My Other write ups-

http://scrumsecrets.blogspot.in/2014/10/major-responsibilities-of-product-owner.html

http://scrumsecrets.blogspot.in/2014/10/being-effective-product-owner.html

http://scrumsecrets.blogspot.in/2014/10/increase-roi-for-projects-with-scrum.html

Major Responsibilities of a Product Owner

Responsibilities of a Product Owner

The key stakeholder of Scrum Projects is the Product Owner One integral responsibility of the Product Owner is to convey the importance and significance of the Scrum Project to the Scrum Team. This is the key for the success of any Agile Project through the use of Product Backlog.
Now let us look at some of the major responsibilities of a Product Owner:

• Creation and Maintenance of the Product Backlog: Scrum Methodology is mostly used in the software environment and new product development field. This is an on-going job and full time responsibility of the Product Owner. He has to constantly keep grooming it especially before any sprint planning meetings.
• Prioritizing of Backlog according to the Business ROI: Product Owner also needs to prioritize and sequence the backlog according to the needs of the business and situations.
• He also elaborates the epics, themes and features into user stories which are feasible enough to be achieved in a single sprint.
• The Product Owner does the job of continuously reminding the Team of the Sprint & Release and ensures that the team remains on track in realizing their goals.
• The Product Owner does the job of continuously engaging the customer and stakeholders to ensure that the Team is building the right product and delivering the business value expected of it. Also at the end of every Sprint the Product Owner has the opportunity to steer the team in the direction which will create value for the stakeholders.
• The Product Owner also keeps inspecting the work done by the Scrum Team at the end of every Sprint and has the absolute authority to accept or reject their work or to suggest modifications.
• Product owner also acts as the voice of the Team to the outside world and should ensure that all the channels of communication remains open and the project get the right kind and type of support needed to succeed.
• Has the authority to terminate a Sprint if the Product Owner feels that there is drastic change in direction needed and the Spent is no longer needed. It may happen in cases where the competitor releases a new product and the client wants a counter response
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Responsibilities of a Product Owner 2

The responsibilities of a Product Owner is onerous and there are a lot of hats that have to be worn by him hence choice of a Product Owner must be done wisely as it could lead to success or failure for the entire project which could ultimately mean success or failure of the company.

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Being an effective Product Owner

who a product owner is?

Before we read about how to be an effective product owner, let us first understand who a product owner is and what he/she does.  A product owner is not a separate title but is a role that can be performed by a business analyst or even a representative of an end user.
A product owner is a stakeholder who acts as an interface between the business representatives and the project team. A product owner understands the business requirements and communicates it to the team for development on behalf of the customer. A product owner is responsible for creating a priority list of backlogs, attending daily sprint meetings, and steering the development process successfully to meet the customer’s requirements. The product owner communicates the progress of the team and continuously refines product requirements. It is also important that a product owner have a good business sense which is important while prioritizing user stories based on cost and functionality.
A product owner must be actively involved-

Effective product owner

The test of an effective product leader is how well he/she balances the expectations of business representatives and capability of the team to deliver. There are several ways a product can be more effective. A common mistake product owners make is not committing enough time to be involved with the team. Product owners should be as hands-on as possible and schedule sufficient time to holding estimation workshops, planning sprints, and providing feedback for the team.
An empowered product owner nurtures an empowered team-
Customers most often expect more value to be delivered than the team’s throughput or might suggest several changes that can slowdown the speed of the development team. A product owner supports his team by managing customer’s expectations so that workflow is not affected due to unreasonable expectations. A product owner allows the team to estimate the time required to complete the backlog identified for a particular sprint. At the same time, a product owner motivates the team to deliver the backlog of a sprint on time.
Technical knowledge is essential-

product owner knowldage

It is also important that product owners have some technical knowledge, though he/she does not necessarily have to be a developer themselves. Since, they will be interacting with the team on a regular basis, having a technical background can serve well while resolving issues. Technical knowledge can also help a product owner bridge the gap between the technical and business aspects of a project while liaising with developers and business representatives.
A product owner is similar to the role played by a Chief Engineer in Toyota. The Chief Engineer collects requirements and executes them during production, even taking some decisions on their own.

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Scrum Product Owner Certified (SPOC™)

Overview scrum product owner

The Product Owner represents the interests of the stakeholder community to the Scrum Team. The Product Owner is responsible for ensuring clear communication of product or service functionality requirements to the Scrum Team, defining Acceptance Criteria, and ensuring those criteria are met. The Product Owner must always maintain a dual view. He or she must understand and support the needs and interests of all stakeholders, while also understanding the needs and workings of the Scrum Team.

Applicants will be awarded the Scrum Product Owner Certified (SPOC^™) certificate by SCRUMstudy upon successfully passing the certification exam.

Scrum Certification detail

Certification	Prerequisites		Target Audience	Cost Of Exam	Maintaining Certification(RCUs)	Current Pass Rate (%)*
	Experience	Education
SPOC™	Nil	Preferably SDC™ (or) SMC™ certified professional	Anyone who interfaces with business stakeholders or works as a Product Owner in a Scrum project.	USD 600	40 Recertification units every 2 years	93

*Pass Rate for the SPOC^™ examination indicates the percentage of candidates passing the exam in the first attempt who attempted all the questions.

Exam Format

• Multiple choice
• 140 questions per exam
• No negative marks for wrong answers
• 180 minutes duration
• Proctored online exam.
• Current pass rate: 93%

Audience Profile

This certification is for anyone who interfaces with stakeholders or works as a Product Owner in a Scrum Team.

Prerequisites

There is no formal prerequisite for this certification. However, SDC^™ or SMC^™ Certified professionals will be able to better understand the concepts required for this certification exam. It is also highly recommended to attend a 2-day SPOC^™ classroom training provided by a SCRUMstudy approved Authorized Training Partner (A.T.P.)

How to ApplyScrum Product Owner Certified

1. Register for free on SCRUMstudy.com and apply for the exam (OR) Attend a classroom training provided by a SCRUMstudy Authorized Training Partner and register for free on SCRUMstudy.com.
2. Apply for the exam by paying USD 600 or by using the exam voucher provided by the SCRUMstudy A.T.P. You need to submit relevant documents (if required).
3. Access the online course and take the exam
   1. Get access to online course on 'Scrum Product Owner Certified'.
   2. Download SBOK^™ Guide online version.
   3. Schedule the three hour online proctored exam.
   4. SCRUMstudy verifies the application; and confirms the exam date & time.
   5. Take the three hour online proctored exam.
4. Upon successful completion of the exam, get an online certificate.
   1. Your name will be added to the SCRUMstudy Certification Registry.
   2. The physical certificate will be shipped to you.
   3. If you are unable to pass the exam, you can schedule again and take a maximum of two free exam retakes.

Maintaining Certification

To maintain the certification status, Scrum Product Owner Certified (SPOC^™) professional will need to earn 40 re-certification credits every 2 years

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Increase ROI for projects with Scrum

ROI for projects with Scrum

One of the key characteristics of any project is the uncertainty of results or outcomes. It is impossible to guarantee project success at completion, irrespective of the size or complexity of a project. Considering this uncertainty of achieving success, it is therefore important to start delivering results as early in the project as possible. This early delivery of results, and thereby value, provides an opportunity for reinvestment and proves the worth of the project to interested stakeholders. It is important to:

1. Understand what adds value to customers and users and to prioritize the high value requirements on the top of the Prioritized Product Backlog.
2. Decrease uncertainty and constantly address risks that can potentially decrease value if they materialize. Also work closely with project stakeholders showing them product increments at the end of each Sprint, enabling effective management of changes.
3. Create Deliverables based on the priorities determined by producing potentially shippable product increments during each Sprint so that customers start realizing value early on in the project.

Some of the key differences with respect to Value-driven Delivery in Scrum project and Traditional projects are given in the figure below

ROI for projects with Scrum image

ROI for projects with Scrum conclusion

In Scrum projects, User Stories are ranked in order of priority which is an effective method for determining the desired User Stories for each iteration or release of the product or service. The purpose is to create a simple, single list with the goal of prioritizing features, rather than being distracted by multiple prioritization schemes.
This simple list also provides a basis for incorporating changes and identified risks when necessary. Each change or identified risk can be inserted in the list based on its priority relative to the other User Stories in the list. Typically, new changes will be included at the expense of features that have been assigned a lower priority.
Minimum Marketable Features (MMF) are also defined, so that the first release or iteration happens as early as possible, leading to increased ROI.

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