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Agile Scrum for Beginners

From the eleven elements of Scrum through writing a product backlog, relative estimation, running a sprint, reading burndown charts and velocity, the definition of done, retrospectives, forecasting completion with Monte Carlo, and spotting anti-patterns. Each lesson reads one more piece of real data from seven sprints of a fictional team called biblio, and twenty lessons take you to the point where you could run a sprint with your own team tomorrow.

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Curriculum

The 20 lessons are grouped into seven chapters, and working through them in order is the best way. Note: every output in the text comes from running a small Python command called sprintkit over the data for biblio's sprints 1 to 7. You do not need to read the code — reading the output is enough.

Chapter 1 — Foundations (lessons 1–3)

The eleven things Scrum consists of, and why it takes that shape. Empiricism and its three pillars, and the three accountabilities. This chapter puts a name to "we hold a daily stand-up, but I have no idea if we are doing it right".

1

The whole of Scrum (there are only eleven things in it)

Three accountabilities, five events and three artefacts. How a two-week sprint goes round once, and what Scrum deliberately does not decide.

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Empiricism and the three pillars (why a plan made before you start is wrong)

A simulation running 35 backlog items shows, in numbers, the gap between a plan made up front and a forecast based on actuals. Transparency, inspection and adaptation, in that order.

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The three accountabilities (what happens when there are two POs)

Product owner, scrum master and developers. That these are accountabilities rather than job titles, and three warning signs visible in the team data.

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Chapter 2 — Writing the backlog (lessons 4–6)

The product goal, user stories, acceptance criteria, INVEST and splitting stories. The most important chapter in the course: if this falls apart, everything after it does too.

4

The product goal and the product backlog (the order is information)

How to write a goal whose achievement you can count, the iceberg shape of fine detail at the top and coarse below, and finding structural damage with a lint.

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5

User stories and acceptance criteria (writing sentences you can judge)

Why the "why" is the most important of the three parts, and why "easy to read" and "appropriate" cannot be acceptance criteria. Include one failure case.

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6

INVEST and splitting stories (21 points split into 10)

Seven patterns for splitting an item that is too big, and why you must not split by design, implementation and test. Write the acceptance criteria before you split.

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Chapter 3 — Estimating and running a sprint (lessons 7–9)

Relative estimation and planning poker, sprint planning, the sprint backlog and the daily scrum. You take two weeks all the way round once.

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Estimating and planning poker (the moment the votes split is the valuable one)

Why a story point is not a unit of time. Reading the session notes to see what is happening when the votes split between 3 and 8, and when someone plays a question mark.

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8

Sprint planning (is your goal just a list of items?)

Why, then what, then how. Sizing from the last three sprints' actuals, and writing a one-sentence goal that still holds if one item drops out.

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9

The sprint backlog and the daily scrum (the three questions are not mandatory)

The sprint backlog belongs to the developers and is rewritten daily. What to talk about on day nine with five points untouched and one day left.

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Chapter 4 — Measuring (lessons 10–11)

Burndown charts and velocity. The two most commonly misused things in Scrum, covered both in how to read them properly and in how they must never be used.

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Burndown charts (the sprint where nothing came off the chart until day eight)

Read the shape of the line, not the number. What a cliff, a plateau and a staircase mean, read from two real datasets side by side.

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11

Velocity (make it a target and all you get is inflated estimates)

The only use for velocity is answering "roughly how many more sprints" as a range. Why comparing teams, dividing it per person, and setting growth targets all break it.

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Chapter 5 — Inspecting and adapting (lessons 12–15)

The definition of done, the sprint review, the retrospective and refinement. This is where you check what you built and change one thing at a time about how you work.

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The definition of done (two of the things we called done did not meet it)

How it differs from acceptance criteria, what to do with anything that fails it, and the mechanism by which loosening it inflates velocity and nothing else. Start with four items.

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13

The sprint review (do not put every comment into the backlog)

A working session, not an approval gate. Show only what is done, and sort the feedback into backlog, take away, or decline.

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14

The retrospective (the team that decided the same improvement three times)

What you decide does not happen because it never entered the sprint backlog. A sixty-minute format that starts by checking the previous actions.

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15

Refinement (only 0.8 of a sprint is ready to start)

Not an event but an ongoing activity. Prepare the next 1.5 to 2 sprints' worth. Do not turn "ready" into a gate.

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Chapter 6 — Answering "when will it be done?" (lessons 16–17)

Forecasting completion with Monte Carlo, plus lead time and flow efficiency. When someone asks for a date, you can answer with probabilities and measurements.

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Forecasting with Monte Carlo (answering "when will it be done" with a probability)

An answer from dividing by the average is right 21% of the time. Drawing past actuals at random and stacking them gives you a forecast with a probability attached.

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17

Lead time and flow efficiency (you say 7.9 days on average and it takes 11)

The gap between lead time and cycle time is waiting. Answer at the 85th percentile, and cut the waiting with a WIP limit rather than working faster.

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Chapter 7 — Reality and adoption (lessons 18–20)

Technical practices and CI, finding anti-patterns in the data, and introducing this to your own team. It ends on what you will do tomorrow.

18

CI and engineering practices (the Scrum Guide does not require CI)

Deriving why you need technical practices from the constraint of finishing every two weeks. Testing the backlog data itself in CI.

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19

Scrum anti-patterns (when the form is right but nothing comes out)

Finding nine smells in the fictional team's data and deciding the first move for each. Never aim a smell at a person.

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20

Wrapping up and adopting this with your own team (the order to start in tomorrow)

Six things to decide before you begin, what to do in sprints one to four, and what you can safely skip. You can start with no tooling at all.

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Once you have finished all 20 lessons, pick up the tools your team actually needs in Git & GitHub for Beginners, or take the CI from lesson 18 a step further with Docker for Beginners. Membership unlocks every course.