Scrum Fine-Tuning with Organizational Patterns

Scrum is easy to describe but hard to do: you’ve heard that a million times. And you’ve read your favorite am-I-doing-Scrum-properly checklist and believe it gives you an easy path to making your Scrum work. However, most Scrum failures have reasons that are not always obvious — and after you’re dead, you won’t even know what got you. Scrum comprises over 50 organizational patterns, each one of which is crucial to a successful software Scrum implementation. Patterns can help you find and fix these problems — come to this hands-on session to learn how.

This seminar will teach you how to use organizational patterns to improve your Scrum implementation. Each organizational patterns is a small, local approach to strengthening your Scrum Scrum. Patterns capture solutions to similar problems seen in other organizations, and because they are incremental and empirical, they can help you with your Agile process improvement.

The patterns we present in this class have all been through the extensive reviewing process of the Pattern Community (PLoP) to ensure that the solutions are broadly reproducible. Furthermore, each pattern has been scrutinized by some of the leading Scrum people in the world.

We have divided Organizational Patterns into 3 categories:

• • One set of Organizational Patterns that map directly to the Scrum framwork, e.g.: Firewall – Someone has to keep the monkeys off the developers’ backs. Who would that be in Scrum? Well, the Scrum Master protects the process and is therefore a firewall. Less obvious is that the Product Owner is also a Firewall, in making sure only one set of requirements come into a sprint. What about a manager, can a manager be a Firewall? (also see the pattern Patron Role)

  • One set of Organizational Patterns that map directly to a Scrum software implementation. So even if it is not part of the Scrum framework, it is still considered good practice, e.g.: Get on with it – Even if you don’t have a complete, comfortable plan to get started, take what you know and take it forward to build an initial product.

  • One set of Organizational patterns that can inspire thinking and dialog that amplify Scrum process improvement, e.g.: Face-to-Face Before Working Remotely that relates the success that comes from having team members spending some face time at their remote partners’ location before starting to work across the miles.

At the end of the class you will know how to use patterns to find and improve the weak spots in your Scrum implementation.

Agenda

Welcome and Introduction

• 1. Short History of Patterns and Organizational Patterns

  2. Scrum in 3 minutes

  3. Pattern Overview

  4. Organizational patterns in the Scrum context

     1. 1. From Scrum to Org Patterns: Looking at Patterns from a Scrum Perspective

        2. From Org Patterns to Scrum: Looking at Scrum from a Patterns Perspective

        3. Three groups of patterns

  5. Solving impediments with patterns

  6. Pattern Dependencies

• • • 1. Pattern dependencies

      2. Pattern sequences

      3. Pattern languages

• 7. Advanced Topics

  8. Next steps and homework

All attendees will receive a copy of the book Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development

Pre-requisite

• • You should have an understanding of Scrum