Summer 2011 Updates roundup

[George Moraitakis]

Hi all. Hope everyone is having or had already some great summer
holidays.

Thought of touching base with some updates from the world of Scrum

CHANGES TO THE SCRUM GUIDELINES
Some changes were suggested recently to the scrum guidelines.

A) Product Backlog - Ordered not Prioritized

One significant change pertains to the Product Backlog and
specifically to the approach in sorting the Product Items. The main
theme here is that it is ORDERED not PRIORITISED. While the Product
Backlog must be ordered, prioritization is only one technique — and
rarely a good one at that. The new Scrum Guide instead uses the term
ordered for the Product Backlog. This reflects long-held understanding
by many leaders in the Scrum community.


B) .... while the pigs & chickens are dropped

And yet another more cosmetic change that took place in the Scrum
guidelines is the dropping of the pigs & chickens. The metaphore
created by Ken Schwaber, one of Scrum creators, has over the years
created some controversy particularly with regards on labelling
people. This time again has been perceived as derogatory but most
importantly they are adding silos between everyone involved in the
project which can only harm the framework that Scrum tries to put in
place and which promotes people and interactions.


C) A new definition for Sprint Backlog

In the Sprint Guide the Sprint Backlog is redefined as a "set of
Product Backlog items selected for the Sprint plus a plan for
delivering the product Increment and realizing the Sprint Goal. The
Sprint Backlog is a forecast by the Development Team about what
functionality will be in the next Increment and the work needed to
deliver that functionality"

Read on the details on related articles
- http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/367-its-ordered--not-prioritized
- http://www.scrum.org/scrum-guide-updates



NEWSFLASH

Check out some interesting news and articles published recently

1) The Value of Velocity: Arguing that velocity is a measure of how
much business value was delivered by the team in a sprint
http://www.projectsatwork.com/content/Articles/266507.cfm

2) Silent Grouping for sizing User stories. A complementary
methodology to planning poker. http://systemagility.com/2011/05/22/using-silent-grouping-to-size-user-stories/

3) Jeff Sutherland & Ken Schwaber aka the fathers of Scrum in their
recent apearence in ESE Conference Zürich
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r1GYC04VHI&feature=youtu.be

4) The biggest problem Scrum Teams face is that they fail to deliver a
working product at the end of the Spring. This article suggests some
interesting techniques to overcome this.
http://agileconsortium.blogspot.com/2011/08/biggest-problem.html


NEXT SCRUM MASTER TRAINING IN ATHENS
The next upcoming Scrum Master training in Athens is planned for
December with Michel Goldenberg. If you know of any colleagues or
anyone else interested please send details.