Teams cannot maximize Scrum and use it to solve their problems due to a Scrumbut. Organizations that are looking into implementing Agile may turn to Scrum. However, implementing Scrum will not let you attain the success that Agile is recognized for if you don’t make the shift. Organizations that don’t make that shift are called Scrumbuts as they are putting Scrum into action, but with changes for their unique situation. Here are signs that you may be a Scrumbut.
Your developers keep getting ahead of the testers
Scrum team aims to complete the task by the end of the race and members of team do what it takes to achieve this. Team members who get ahead of the others will hold back the team in due course. Every member of the team has to do something to help the group such as writing a test framework or running a test. If the entire team falls behind, all members also fall behind, regardless of what they are accomplishing as a person.
You fail to comply with regulatory documents
The Scrum team provides working code. Building the most amazing user experience won’t matter at all if your software cannot be used and you don’t comply with the required documentation. Ensure all tasks are done during the sprint.
Members of the team are scared to try new ideas as they’re afraid of failure
Scrum team members always do their best and feel comfortable about it as they know they won’t be blamed for trying to achieve the best. You should not allow your team members to become afraid of failure.
Retrospectives focus on “who” instead of “what”
You should focus on how you work together. It’s also important to focus on the tools you use to complete your tasks. There may be members who cannot meet the team’s demands. Those team members will be will be uncovered without the retrospectives revolving around them. You should allow the team to focus on the skills of its members and eliminate those that prevent the team from achieving success.
You want all of the stories described in detail before you start the first sprint
Traditional organizations don’t start until they have discussed every detail. On the other hand, Agile organizations put the stories into the backlog once they have enough information to estimate them and allocate business value. The information gets discussed later by determining implementation activities during the sprint planning assemblies. By waiting to define the information until everyone is ready to work, the team can avoid unnecessary waste.
You focus on metrics than on outstanding results
There are plenty of metrics that can be considered by a Scrum team and ScrumMaster. These metrics help the Scrum team determine blockers. However, these metrics can become a goal that the team may only focus on it and forget about the results. The team can only be considered effective if the software is launched and the client is satisfied. Metrics should only be used to determine problems and during the retrospective.

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The Scrum Master ensures that a Scrum team follows the practices and values of Scrum. They help the team do the best work they can. The role of the Scrum Master is often assumed by a technical team leader or former project manager, but anyone can become a Scrum Master.
The Scrum Master is not only considered a coach, but also a process owner as they establish a balance with the main stakeholder (often called the product owner) of the project. He does anything possible to ensure the team’s highest level of performance.
This includes working with the main stakeholder, facilitating meetings and eliminating hindrances to the project’s progress to ensure the product backlog is in great condition and well-prepared for the ensuing sprint. The Scrum Master is also seen as the team’s protector. He ensures that the team doesn’t overcommit themselves to what they can do during a sprint because of pressure from a very aggressive product owner.
While the Scrum Master may not have authority over members of the Scrum team, he does have power over the process. He can say what needs to be done during the duration of the project. The Scrum Master helps the team use Scrum. Their assistance is similar to a personal fitness trainer who helps you perform the right exercises and stick to your program. He will not only motivate you, but also ensure that you don’t cheap by not doing a particularly hard exercise. The authority of the fitness trainer is limited as he cannot force you to do an exercise you hate. The fitness trainer will remind you of your objectives and how you have decided to achieve them. That is the authority of the fitness trainer that was given by you. For a Scrum Master, he has authority. However, his authority is given to him by the team.
He can say that the team is supposed to deliver fully functional software at the end of every sprint. If the team failed, the Scrum Master can ask about what can be done to make sure that they’ll perform well next time. This is the Scrum Master using power over the process. If the team failed to provide potentially shippable software, something has gone wrong. Since the authority of the Scrum Master doesn’t go beyond process, he should not ask a member of the team to review all codes because they failed to provide something possibly shippable. While it might be a good idea to ask a team member to review the code, the Scrum Master cannot really make that decision. It is not in the scope of his authority. In other words, the authority of the Scrum Master is limited to ensuring the team adheres to the process. It’s safe to say that his role can be harder than that of a normal project manager. The project manager can tell the team to do something because it’s his decision. The Scrum Master, on the other hand, is limited to ensuring that the team follows Scrum.

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Velocity and burndown charts are used to monitor the development of an Agile project. The velocity report monitors the story points accomplished in a certain timeframe and allows team members to know how well they’re following the schedule. A burndown chart, on the other hand, is a graphical illustration of the remaining work and time. Time is often located on the horizontal axis and backlog or outstanding work on the vertical axis. A burndown chart can be used to determine when the work will be finalized. It’s often used in Scrum and other agile software development procedures.
Benefits of Burndown Charts
One tracking and planning tool
The team can break down the tasks and update estimated and remaining effort. This allows them to own the plan. They can plan and track their progress using the burndown chart.
Daily visibility reduces risks
Cost overrun and schedule overrun are significant metrics that are monitored in traditional project management on a weekly basis. The burndown chart provides feedback on schedule and effort on a daily basis, reducing the risks and increasing alarms once something goes wrong. For instance, if the progress line hovers above the ideal line, the team knows that there’s a problem. They can plan the right course of action and mitigate risks before they become large problems.
Schedule management
The team can plan what needs to be accomplished in a sprint and update the list of tasks. Since the updates are done on a daily basis, the team knows whether it’s on the right track to meet their objectives or not.
Communicate with stakeholders and clients
A burndown chart is a great tool for communicating with stakeholders and clients. It can be printed and put in an Agile room or even shared with stakeholders on a daily basis. A burndown chart provides visibility on the progress of a project. If there is no online tool, a burndown chart can be physically displayed using a chart paper or whiteboard and place in the area where the team works.
How to Make a Burndown chart
Break down the tasks. Every task must have associated hours that the team agrees on during the planning meeting. The burndown chart is then plotted. A lot of Agile tools such as Mingle, RTC and Rally have an in-built capability for burndown charts. A burndown chart, however, can still be maintained in a spreadsheet if you don’t have Agile tools. Remaining efforts are put on the Y axis, while dates are placed on the X axis.
Burndown charts can be plotted at the release level or sprint level. Sprint burndown charts are usually monitored using effort remaining, but it is also common for some to use story points to monitor release burndown.
Different variants of burndown charts have appeared since their inception. Some find it useful to make burnup charts at the release or sprint level. While the Cumulative Flow Diagram is becoming more common, burndown charts are still the most prevalent tracking tool among Agile practitioners because of their simplicity and effectiveness.

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Getting to know more about sprint will help in understanding more about processes done in preparing for a meeting. With this review, you will learn more about Scrum. In Scrum, it is a requirement for every sprint to provide a product increment that is potentially shippable. This only means that as every sprint ends, the team should already produce a piece of software that is tested, coded, and usable. Most of the time, this is presented in a form of demo where all new features are shown and are introduced to everyone in the review meeting.
Whenever a sprint review meeting is on process, it is most of the time kept informal. This is done intentionally but forbids the team that will present their demo to use any PowerPoint slides and not use more than 2 hours of preparing before attending and presenting the meeting. When it comes to handling sprint review meeting, it should not be treated by the team as a distraction or even a detour for the entire team. It should be taken by the team as a natural result for the sprint. This will help the team in improving their work and still attain their goal of making it great in the presentation.
Teams who are preparing for the sprint review, they should be prepared for the people whom they are presenting their demos with. The meeting usually includes the Scrum Team, Scrum Master, product owner, customers, management, and also some developers coming as representatives from other projects. Knowing how the people are in the review meeting will help the entire team in always being prepared of the possible reactions from everyone. It can possibly help them in being active in receiving questions and also in taking in recommendations or improvements that must be done.
When the time of the sprint review is done, the entire project will be assessed contrary to the goal that is usually determined throughout the meeting for sprint planning. This is usually the biggest challenged for the team as their goals can be questioned and may put their work into further questioning. For the team to succeed and impress the people in the meeting, the team should already arrive in the meeting with the product backlog item completely done. The item should be brought in the sprint where the sprint’s overall goal is achieved. This way, it can impress both the product owner, developers of other projects, and even the Scrum Master.
In the meeting, everyone attending is expecting the team to provide live demonstration and not show them a report. It is the product owner’s right to review all the commitments in the meeting and will be the one declaring the items that are considered as done. On the other hand, the Scrum master will be the one converting the feedbacks into another product backlog items that prioritizes everything that the owner wants. Usually, when there is a new scope discovered during the development of the new items, the new scope is displacing the old scope as the discovered scope is give more important than the original one.

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Learning when to use the definition of ready is another confusing thing for many. Currently, many teams are using the definition of done or DoD for checking whenever a user story is already finished or whenever the products is already set for delivery. However, when it comes to user stories that certain teams receive from product owners, teams can only verify user stories when the Definition of Ready or DoR is used.
Given that there are more individuals who are interested with learning more about what definition of ready is and why it is essential for the increase of the planning productivity of the team, there are even blogs pertaining to this term and are explaining its significance in a team. Anyone can agree that DoR is usually the least to be utilized yet considered as powerful tools that any agile team can use. As what Scrum defined DoR, stories should be instantly actionable. A team should have the ability of determining what should be done as well as the needed amount of work that is required for it to be completed. Those stories that are labeled “ready” should be concise, clean and actionable.
While DoR is used for most activities and artifacts, there are some who find it as the introduction for the important factor in the work stream which is the concept of preparing for planning. There are even benefits of a well-structured DoR that teams can get. These benefits are the following:
• Allows measuring the “ready” state of a backlog item.
• Ensures that the backlog items were thought together “just enough”
• Helps the team in the identification of other team members or product owner that is becoming overwhelmed.
• Keeps the entire team accountable for every member
• Reduces the pressure over the team for committing estimates prior to labeling stories as “ready”
• Reduces the possibility of requirements churn during development.
With all of these benefits in mind, there is no doubt that DoR can possibly solve problems of most teams who are working on stories.
Basically, a team that are working together towards attaining “readiness of the stories” will help product owners in an amazing way especially when it comes to improving themselves better. Also, it can help the team in not waiting longer for blockers for resolving every sprint.
There are also other ways on how people can use or take advantage of definition of ready in creating an overly regulated process which may impede the collaboration between the development team and owner. This means that whenever there are communication issues with the two parties, Dor can be extended using a new policy.
Once particular improvements of definition of ready are done, it will then require the product owner to state that every requirement is correct, consistently pre-checked done by a software architect and another product owner, and should also complete. This will prevent any missing details or ambiguity.
When it comes to DoR, experts are recommending teams to choose smaller DoR. This allows the entire team to be more capable when it comes to handling any incomplete information.

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It is said that the definition of done is important for any highly operational Scrum team. You need to know the important characteristics that a team has for done to be defined. Making sure that a team can meet these DoD criteria can guarantee that your team can deliver the said features that can assure that it is truly done both in functionality as well as quality.

Most of the time the definition of done is composed of a list of certain activities that can range from writing codes, coding comments, testing unit, testing integration, releasing notes, designing documents and a lot more. These activities can add demonstrable or verifiable value to any product. When you focus on the steps that add value, it allows the team to put all of their attention on the things that they should complete for them to build the software on time and eliminate all the activities that waste their time and complicate their development efforts in finishing the software.

In the simplest form, DoD is having the ability of saying that the feature is either already done or not done. What it gives a product or any artifact is that, it adds clarity in the statement that the feature is done. With using DoD as the reference used by a team member during a conversation, it is already one way of effectively updating other members of the team as well as the owner of the products.

When asked by the scrum to provide “potentially shippable software” at very print’s end, it means that the software is already equipped with a feature or features that can already be released, provided with a limited notice, to the users at the discretion of the product owner. Those products that are set to be released with a span of 2 days are considered as those that are in the potentially shippable state. Preferably, when the term potentially shippable is used in a product, it is already similar to what the Definition of Done is.

In every team, they are working differently to achieve their product’s potentially shippable condition. Most of the time, they use DoD at different levels such as the following:

• DoD for a certain feature. This is typically used for product backlog or story item.
• DoD used for every sprint or the collection of certain features that are developed or made within a single sprint.
• DoD for releases. This is the terms used for items that are labeled as potentially shippable state.

With the different factors that may influence whether an activity belongs to a release, sprint, or feature of DoD, it is necessary that one is well aware of the definitions and get to see its connection with the software or products they develop.

Do remember that DoD is changing in a certain period of time. The ability of the entire team and organizational support in removing impediments can enable the enclosure of added activities in the DoD for either sprints or features. Getting to know these basic things helps in understanding definition of done in product, release, feature, or sprint.

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