PSM Tips - Boost Your Scrum

Professional Scrum Master (PSM)

Some tips to make your team more effective through a better use of Scrum

We’re excited you’re thinking about joining our Professional Scrum Master course!

During each session we share our insights and experiences, and you also learn from the experiences from the other students.

We hear and see a lot of teams struggle with to many and ineffective meetings, dropping their productivity. So let’s give you one tip for each event.

Ready.

Set.

Tip.

During the Sprint Planning – you might call it just planning session – create a draft goal in 10 minutes, list what is needed to achieve this in the next 10 minutes, for each item take 3-5 minutes to discuss how this item will be tackled (approach, architecture, structure, etc.).
And then, iterate.
Refine the goal, add or drop items from the initial list, look at the impact of these on the first appraoch, arechitecture, structure, etc.).
And iterate again – repeat 5 times.
Now the entire team will understand what is expected – a plan.
During the Daily Scrum – you might still call it the daily or the standup – ask one question to the team: If we have to finish by this evening, what is the most important thing we should finish today?
And then have a conversation how the entire team can contribute to this and make it happen.
During the Sprint itself – some call it an iteration – focus on the agreed goal by asking for every single questions you receive: How does this request helps our team achieve the goal?
Unless this is crystal clear, the answer to the request is “sorry, not now”.
During the Sprint Review – you might still call it demo – invite real users (if not possible the closest representative you can find) so that you get real user feedback on what you accomplished.
And then see how this feedback. impacts your backlog.
During the Sprint Retrospective – most teams just call it the Retro – ensure that by the end of the session there is one action selected that the team commits to can and will be finished during the next Sprint.
Nothing of that size? Then split your most promising action in smaller ones and clarify the expected outcome of this smaller step.
Still not small enough?
Repeat.
This will make a continuous improvement cycle to start spinning. Hey, why not just start with the first tip.
Making your team step by step more effective.

Curious to discuss more tips with fellow participants?