One of the reasons why I'm so passionate about Scrum is because it's all about cultivating that kind of emotional that psychological safe
environment
for team growth so that way the team can be both efficient and effective at moving forward with the product.
Hi everybody, thanks for joining us.
My name is Alison Renfro.
And I'm Michael Luchen
And today we're going to talk about Scrum.
We're going to talk about what it is, how to use it, the different ceremonies or events that are incorporated within it.
So stay tuned!
So Scrum is actually a methodology that exists within the Agile kind of mindset and philosophy of product development.
Scrum is like one specific methodology that we can use and it's actually our favorite at Crema that we really love using and it helps specifically
with our product teams achieve proven results.
There's other methodologies like Kanban you can use but Scrum is definitely our go-to when it comes to practicing the Agile philosophy.
Some key aspects of it are really going to be like a lot of the kind of the ceremonies that Scrum has.
So things like daily stand ups, where it's just a brief time where people can give of their individual record on how things are going. It also
includes regular product backlog grooming and regular touch points with stakeholders.
And it really has a big focus on sprints as well in trying to achieve goals within a set amount of time.
So the daily standup.
Some people call it your "daily "Scrum or just "standup" or your "daily touchpoint".
It has a generous amount of names.
It's a short period of time, usually under about 15 minutes, where your full product team comes together and gives updates on what's been going
on.
The goal of the standup is to understand what each individual did the day before, what they're working on today, and if they have any blockers.
It sounds like, you know, pretty basic stuff.
But it's really important to pull the whole team together so that each and every person can go through each of those three components.
You'd be amazed at how many times you can unlock and unblock things on the fly.
So it's a it's a really crucial touchpoint on a day to day basis.
Yeah.
Teams do it differently right.
Yeah.
So do some of your stand happen in person?
Yeah. Yes.
So, we actually have done a mix in the past and it just depends on the project team and the culture of that individual team.
Right now I'm actually practicing a standup that's completely asynchronous and managed over Slack.
And so we just have a simple Slack reminder that pops up every day at a preset time.
So that way when people log on in the morning to Slack one of the first things they can do as they're planning out their day is they can just
type out a quick standup.
So it's a really great way to also kind of meld like the results focus of not only our culture but Scrum as well, while keeping everyone in the loop
and on the same page.
Is there like a preference of time during the day when wish when you should do it.
You know, i think it's going to be different for each team but largely I hear a lot of teams doing it in the morning and having success there.
What do you think?
I like the mornings too.
I've had a lot of feedback from my team members as well that they prefer it in the morning just because it helps get their day off on the right
foot.
And they have equal understanding of where everyone else is at and what their goals should be.
So yeah you know actually a question I had about the daily standup is do you involve your clients in them?
Mm hmm.
So in some I have and some I haven't.
And there's no, there's no real good answer why you should versus you shouldn't. It just a matter of does the client have the capacity to join?
And do they find value in it too? You may have a client that is very much detached from the process and that's not ideal but maybe it's the reality
that you're in.
And in those instances they likely wouldn't be there.
But I would encourage you to bring them along and let them listen and understand.
And if they have a good relationship with the team they can participate to their standups as well.
Yeah.
What about you?
Yeah I agree.
I think it also just depends on the client culture and personality too because you know that the the daily stand up is really like a peek behind the
curtain.
You're seeing the messy kitchen at that point, you're seeing people who need to feel safe to come up and talk about their blockers to the entire
team.
So that way as a team you can move forward as quickly as possible.
And so if the client is OK with seeing that and understands and trust that the team through the process of doing that is going to resolve this
blockers as quickly as possible.
I think it's really great to have the client in that too.
Yes, i agree.
Backlog grooming is one of my favorite kind of aspects of Scrum.
And I think it kind of also melts a little bit more and like the agile philosophy as a whole. So basically the idea with backlog grooming is that
you have your backlog of all your features, your bug fixes, your ideas, your chores, you can prove performance of the app that you're building,
things like that.
But what's really nice is it's just a simple list.
And so every time that you have new feedback or ideas from stakeholders or even your internal team, (or users ideally,) then you just add that
to that backlog. And you're always working as a team and with the product owner to go through and prioritize what is most important.
Hopefully, you're prioritizing it against business value but also throughout like the normal course of the sprint you might be having touch points
with your team to figure out like is this a small thing? Is this something that's easy to do?
Are there any technical considerations? Are there other design considerations around it?
Are there things that maybe we want to build designs for and test first with users before we spend any development effort on?
And naturally, all these discussions help the backlog bubble up. Basically you might have something at the bottom of the backlog that you're
validating as it bubbles up to the top and in the process of that validation.
And as it gets to the top which basically means it's cued up and ready for a new sprint then you're also like, breaking it out, adding more
definition to it, adding more scope and detail around what it is so that way when you're building it you know exactly what you have to do to move
forward on it.
I agree with everything you say. Per usual.
One thing I want to add is that it is really important.
It is a really crucial touchpoint with your client with your stakeholder or your product owner whatever their title might be to give them the
information and the tools that they need to prioritize the tasks that your team is going to be accomplishing.
Like you mentioned, this is one of the most fun touch points or ceremonies or events whatever you want
to call it that you'll have within Scrum because it gives you and your stakeholder the ability to collaborate and come to decisions together. You
may have to, you know, bounce back on ideas or or opinions on things,
but at the end of the day, you walk away with a refined and prioritized list and that gives your team the clarity that they need to actually do the
work that's ahead of them.
Ooh, the retrospective! This is my personal favorite. I love a sprint retrospective.
I think that this is a component of sprints that isn't brought to the table as much as it should be.
At Crema anyway, we do it every single sprint. At some other agencies or other organizations that run Scrum, they don't incorporate it on a Sprint
by Sprint basis.
They might do it on a project by project basis or a quarterly basis. And whatever cadence is right for your team, I would say stick to that, but from
a credit perspective we love doing it on a
Sprint by Sprint basis. And basically what we do is we start off the meeting talking through you know, what at the last sprint hold for us? What
were the things we're really really good? Who did something amazing?
Who did something that we need to call out? We need to celebrate and we need to note that to keep doing that moving forward.
Making that recognition empowers your team members to feel like they are doing the right thing and they're headed in the right direction
acknowledging someone's success or acknowledging, you know, team members that did something well or came across a learning is very very crucial to the
team's growth but also that individual's growth.
One of the reasons why I'm so passionate about Scrum is because it's all about cultivating that kind of emotional, psychological safe environment
for team growth
so that way the team can be both efficient and effective at moving forward with product.
So retrospectives aren't all rays of sunshine.
We do talk about the things that maybe didn't go so well.
Honestly, like what sucked? What was hard? And what you know didn't turn out as good as we thought it should have?
And we really actually worked through those things.
And from there you kind of work through different solutions and ways to acknowledge and address those problems moving forward.
I think the most important part of a sprint retrospective is walking in with the understanding that everybody did everything that they could with
the knowledge and time and capabilities that they had.
It should be seen as a safe space and you should feel really empowered to not only grow yourself but you should feel empowered to grow others.
It's your responsibility as a team member to do so.
So sprint planning just like everything else in Scrum is going to differ based on the team based on the company based on the client.
Crema, we do things in a really unique and awesome way.
I think the retrospective that we just went over we include during our sprint planning since we do hold a sprint by Sprint cadence on that but there
are other components when it comes to sprint planning that we can lightly touch on and walk through.
So the first piece is the sprint review. So you know, you've already done your retrospective, you really already done like a really good deep dive
into the actual tactical components. The sprint retrospective is really there to make sure that you are walking through all the different tickets
and getting updates on them accordingly
before you close out the sprint.
After that is product demos. That's always really fun. This is when you get to show off all your hard work!
It can be design, it can be development. Really it's a time to walk through any and all updates and changes that have been made.
Yeah I really like to celebrate a celebration of that yeah.
And for that we go into story refinement and story pointing.
So you work with the team to really deep dive into the individual stories that are coming up that have been prioritized by the client.
Updating, adding, adjusting acceptance criteria and information within them.
And then you add story points to them.
You estimate as a team so that you can track your velocity down the road.
Once you've done that what happens next michael?
You commit to commit.
That's a really, really, really crucial point during sprint planning.
I have some heavy thoughts about that but I'll let you talk about sprint commitments first.
Yeah I mean really it's it's I think it's primarily focused around identifying the goal of that sprint and making sure that what you're
committing to aligns with that goal.
Yeah exactly.
It's a full team commitment. Yourself included, the client included and you're really dedicating yourself to doing and completing (including
testing) that work before the sprint ends.
After that you're ready to go.
You kick off your sprint and you get going.
It's a pretty awesome experience.
Some companies break them up and have independent meetings. Here at Crema we like to pull them all together.
It really has a nice flow to it I think.
Yeah absolutely yeah.
So we hope that this video helped you learn more about Scrum and understand some of the challenges that go into it as well as some of the and maybe
break down some of the preconceived notions that you've read elsewhere on the Internet.
If you want to learn more about Scrum we have another video somewhere here that talks more about maybe those here I don't know more there.
Yeah.
It talks more about like some of the questions that you have about Scrum so highly recommend checking it out if you want to hear Alison and I
get on our soapboxes about some of the common questions about Scrum.
Otherwise, my name is Michael and I'm the senior product manager here at Crema.
I'm actually in the Washington D.C. area, so if you want to connect hit me up in the info is below the video to maybe learn more about Scrum and
other agile methodologies.
Don't forget to like and subscribe and comment below with any questions that you have.
We would love to chat.
Thanks again.