Certified Scrum Master (CSM) Certification Training in Trivandrum

• Dedicated teams
• User stories
• Velocity
• Burn down charts
• Definition of done
• Relative estimating

• Don’t be afraid to ask for help and communicate your problems and schedules
• Always be on time for the meetings

• Transparency– This leads to transparent flow of information throughout the project and organization thereby creating a very open work culture.
• Inspection – Inspection of the scrum activities through the use of different techniques and feedback from client
• Adaptation- Adaptation involves making improvements in the process by learning through inspection.

• What went well?
• What did not go well?
• What did not go well? What needs improvement and what are the points to improve?

Every product backlog item gets declared as DONE it must be accepted by all team members and they must in advance know when it is called DONE. Here the team must be appraised of how a work is done, what are the standards required to be obeyed, and the different ways to verify whether it is done.

Each user story will have a specific criteria description called the acceptance criteria for that story.

Learn the need for being agile in your software development projects. Understand the key concepts of the development using the agile approach which is driven by value. It is a well-organized project management process. Also, know how to embrace flexible planning methods. Become collaborative with the team, scrum master, and product owner.

a)Trivia About Agile Methodology

In order to correct issues cropping up due to the waterfall method, a new development practice was introduced in 2001 by a set of people called Agile Methodology. The main concept adapted in Agile is the iterative way. Set of software industry giants met in Snowbird, UT in 2000 to discuss this method. Then they decided to differentiate agile from the traditional method with some values and called them Agile Manifesto

b) Agile Framework – A Brief Overview

Agile's iterative software development method follows many frameworks including Scrum, Lean, Kanban, Extreme Programming, Feature-driven development etc. It is a big list and Scrum is the most commonly used framework. The scrum will focus on three roles to go through the development cycle: the scrum masters, developers and product owners. 

c) Agile Manifesto 

The set of values defined for Agile methodology is called Agile Manifesto. It was written in Feb 2001 by 17 independent software techies. There were several written among which 4 values were accepted by all which is given below.

• The project can become successful when it depends on people than tools, and discussions must be encouraged than implementing hardcore
• Working on the product should be encouraged rather than focussing on documentation.
• Customer satisfaction is the key over negotiating the contract.
• Reacting to the changes and not strictly following a plan.

d) Key Principles in Agile

The Agile Manifesto gave birth to 12 agile principles.

• Customer satisfaction is the prime objective and this can be achieved by delivering projects on-time with the expected outcome.
• Accept changes at any stage of development and produce a competitive product to the customer
• Continuously sharing working software with the client instead of sharing documentation about project status
• Business team and development team work collaboratively.
• Provide support to the team with a motivated working environment.
• Conducting daily stand up meetings to let the team meet face to face.
• Measure work progress with the working software.
• Promote sustainable development.
• Good design will improve agility.
• Keep the entire process simple and discuss solutions more than worrying about the problem.
• Empower team to come up with ideas.
• Introduce games during meetings to ease team tension and increase productivity.
• How to get to these principles will be explained during the training.

Learn about how the Scrum Master facilitates the Scrum Team and conditions where he doesn’t. 

Unlike in waterfall method, QA role is to write test cases and report bugs, in a scrum team QA has an extended role. QA team takes part in the daily meetings along with all team members. They are allowed to discuss with the business analyst and development team. They are part of the test planning phase. The team not only writes test cases but also the acceptance test cases to provide support to the product owner. Story estimation sessions will not happen without the QA team. They help in providing more realistic estimates. In short, the QA team is as equal to the development in the scrum projects.

Yes, that’s how you can easily remember the five values of the scrum process. C FOR C means to Commit you to need Courage. To develop Courage you need to Focus With Open mind and Respect all in the team.

You got it right, it is Commitment – Focus – Openness – Respect – Courage

Scrum process empowers the team to speak and share their views. Therefore scrum managers must understand the team strength and the product owner need. The manager should discuss with the team and let know the product owner to decide on the product backlog item. This will motivate the team to work towards delivery. The manager must never be biased and push team for delivery. Ensure that the team commits and support them during every sprint to combat issues. The manager must not think of bossing around but work along with the team to lead them to successful completion.

The framework of Scrum is simple and it deals efficiently with the changing situations. The work gets split into iterations. It is because during the development process the priority changes due to the situation, user mindset, technology etc. Therefore, the framework focuses on splitting the project into sequences of iterations called sprint. Every sprint will last for a maximum of 4 weeks. Therefore the complexity of the project is split and all changes are accommodated during the sprint meeting. There is not much of a loss and also the user gets the output per the expectation.

The framework is simply understood as Planning – Executing – Learning – Taking Actions. This will continue until the end result is achieved. Every sprint meeting will be in length to plan from the education of the previous sprint.

These days working with people across the globe on projects cannot be avoided. It is not possible to meet all at one table to discuss. Therefore managing teams with documentation might be effective but time-consuming and hence organization must embrace an agile way to work with distributed teams.

Even though it has its own flip side, still it is the best way to work with distributed teams. Remember that people remain the same irrespective of the geography and hence getting work done by setting expectation is quick. Also, use technology to meet people for daily stand up and execute the project efficiently.

• Tuckman’s Group Development Tools and Technique – Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, Adjourning.
• Scrum Master tools Cynefin Framework – Simple, Complicated, Complex, and Chaotic.
• The Japanese Shu Ha Ri – Shu – self-disciplining, Ha – Innovate things, Ri – Execution
• Root cause analysis

Scrum artifacts are basically the set of information that the scrum team uses to make future decisions and set their goals. These details help in discussing how the product is developed, actions to produce it and actions performed during the projects. It includes the following elements: 

• Product Backlog 
• Product Increment and Definition of Done 
• Sprint Backlog 
• Burndown Charts 

Scrum meetings happen when the scrum master, product owner, and development team meet to discuss the goals and the procedure to implement the same. There are many aspects of scrum meetings including: 

• Sprint planning meeting
• Daily scrum meeting 
• Sprint review meeting 
• Sprint retrospective meeting 
• Release planning meeting 

1. Every team member is given stick-it notes and asked to write their views about the project, deadline, completion etc.
2. A good 3 minutes is given to each person to fill the following blank we can complete the task when we ……………………. Let each write their want. They can write 3 to 5 ideas.
3. Ask everyone to read one idea each and make sure that the other person does not repeat the same idea.
4. Have one person to make a note of all the ideas on the board.
5. Take voting from all to come to a common working agreement from the list mentioned in the board.

The people responsible for coding and developing the project is called the development team. The team that test the bug and fixes the issues is called the testing team. As far as scrum projects are considered the entire team is called a scrum team which includes developers, testers, product owners, scrum master, and the high-level stakeholders. These teams are self-organising in agile development and are independent to complete their task. They don’t require anyone to monitor but they manage themselves.

The objective of release planning is to plan and make the scope, budget, and date for the incremental delivery in an agile project. Planning to have multiple sprints until the final product is released is discussed in the release planning meeting.

Every member of the scrum team and the stakeholders are part of this release plan meeting and it happens during each sprint activity. The release planning is done with the help of the product planning output and the pace at which the team completes the product backlog item per each sprint. This pace is nothing but the speed of the team and termed as velocity in agile projects.

• Four or more week longer sprints
• Bigger team size
• Complex backlog items