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Scrum

How You Can Scrum Better With Kanban

May 22, 2024 by Rosie

Press Play and Learn How YOU Can Scrum Better with Kanban

Are you using Scrum and still running into walls around challenges like dependencies, delays, and resistance to changing and improving the way the team works?

Scrum Better with Kanban can help!

The Scrum Better with Kanban course will give you practical solutions to these problems and more, helping you improve the way Scrum works for you in your organization and team.

Watch Now on YouTube

Find more details about Kanban University Certified Training courses on our YouTube channel. Revisit presentations from past conferences, learn from Kanban Experts, meet the Kanban University Distinguished Fellows, and much, much more.

Subscribe today to join more than 5,500 other Kanban enthusiasts on YouTube!

Subscribe to Kanban University on YouTube

Filed Under: KU News, Scrum Tagged With: Kanban, SBK, Scrum, Scrum Better With Kanban, Scrum Kanban Practitioner, YouTube

How Does Your Scrum Flow?

March 26, 2024 by Kanban University

Scrum Better With Kanban Blog Series

Joey Spooner, Vice President for Community Development and Product Management at Kanban University, speaks about Introducing Evolutionary Change at AgileAmericas 2023.

Finding the best path forward when attempting to change can sometimes be challenging for Scrum teams. What if there was an easy way to identify the low hanging fruit for improvement that your fellow Developers would want to achieve?

Press play to watch Joey share some initial approaches to identify the challenges and define solutions as you get started with managed evolutionary change in your Scrum team.

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Stay Tuned!

We will add more to this blog post over time. If you would like to be notified about other problems and potential solutions for Scrum Masters, please use the sign-up box below to join our Scrum email list. 

Filed Under: Scrum Tagged With: dependencies, Dependency Management

The Evolutionary Nature of Learning in Agile Environments 

February 15, 2024 by Rosie

Scrum Better With Kanban Blog Series

In the dynamic world of agile environments, learning is not a linear journey; it’s an evolutionary process. This path is marked by trial and error, constant adaptation, and evolution, particularly when using the Kanban Method. However, this evolutionary approach to learning and change is not exclusive to Kanban and can be effectively integrated by Scrum Teams as well. Let’s explore how this works.

Learning Through Trial and Error

Agile environments thrive on a learning approach that’s indirect and exploratory. Teams often face a series of experiences, each offering unique challenges and opportunities for growth. This process, a fundamental aspect of agile methodologies, demands patience, resilience, and an eagerness to experiment, where each setback paves the way to deeper understanding and improved practices.

Managed Evolutionary Change in the Kanban Method

The Kanban Method fosters this learning through ‘managed evolutionary change’, involving three critical stages: identifying stressors, reflecting and hypothesizing, and leadership in experimentation. This structured approach supports learning and adaptation, making it a key strategy in agile environments.

Applying Managed Evolutionary Change in Scrum

Scrum Teams can also harness the power of managed evolutionary change, particularly during retrospectives or daily Scrum meetings. By adopting managed evolutionary change, Scrum teams can develop and test experiments, leading to continuous improvement and learning.

Here are some ways Scrum teams might implement this:

  1. Integrating Unplanned Work: Allowing for unplanned tasks while completing planned Sprint work. This can help in understanding the team’s flexibility and adaptability. You can learn more about how to address unplanned work in our blog post “Unplanned Work – The Hidden Sprint Surprise.”
  2. Evolving the Definition of Done: Developing new agreements in their Definition of Done and trialing them before formal adoption. This iterative testing ensures that changes are practical and beneficial.
  3. Setting Work in Progress Limits: Establishing limits for one or more columns in their workflow to assess the impact on focus and quality. This can lead to more efficient workflows and higher quality results.

Leveraging Investment in Teams

Whether using Kanban or Scrum, the focus remains on leveraging the existing strengths of teams and personnel. Incremental changes, built on current capabilities, ensure that development is sustainable and aligned with organizational culture.

Further Learning and Training

For those looking to deepen their understanding of these agile methodologies, resources and training are available. Kanban University offers extensive information and courses, beneficial for Scrum practitioners. This includes our new Scrum Better with Kanban (SBK) course.

  • Learn more at Kanban University.
  • Explore formal training opportunities at Kanban Development Path.

Conclusion

The evolutionary nature of learning in agile environments requires a mindset open to experimentation and adaptation. Embracing managed evolutionary change allows teams to address challenges effectively while fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

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Stay tuned for more from our Scrum Better With Kanban blog series. If you would like to be notified about other problems and potential solutions for Scrum Masters, please use the sign-up box below to join our Scrum email list.

Filed Under: Scrum Tagged With: Agile, Evolutionary Change, Scrum, Scrum Better With Kanban

Get More From Your Scrum in 2024 With Kanban

December 20, 2023 by Rosie

Are you a Scrum practitioner, team lead, Scrum Master, Agile coach, or a manager who wants to understand an evolutionary approach to improving your Scrum? Explore how successful Scrum teams have evolved their workflows using the Kanban Method’s practices, principles, and application of evolutionary change management.

Our NEW Scrum Better with Kanban (SBK) course is the perfect place to get started and get more from your Scrum in 2024!

Our Accredited Kanban Trainers are offering classes virtually and around the world in six different languages. All participants will receive the Scrum Kanban Practitioner (SKP) credential from Kanban University.

Don’t miss this opportunity to turbocharge your Scrum! Sign up for SBK now and keep scrolling to explore more Kanban and Scrum resources.

FIND A SCRUM BETTER WITH KANBAN CLASS

How Does Your Scrum Flow?

Finding the best path forward when attempting to change can sometimes be challenging for Scrum teams. What if there was an easy way to identify the low hanging fruit for improvement that your fellow Developers would want to achieve?

READ MORE ABOUT HOW YOUR SCRUM FLOWS

Managing Dependencies

It’s not uncommon for teams to have missing capabilities which then create dependencies on other service providers. A team doing great work may need some extra capability that they don’t already have on their team. In this post, we explore how the Kanban Method can address this kind of challenge.

READ MORE ABOUT MANAGING DEPENDENCIES

Unplanned Work – The Hidden Sprint Surprise

Often, you’re in the middle of a Sprint and here comes the recurring surprise urgent request or demand that breaks either your Sprint Goal or delays the work your Team planned to deliver until the next Sprint. Unplanned work is a common problem we see many Scrum Teams face. In this blog, we explain how the Kanban Method provides a solution.

READ MORE ABOUT UNPLANNED WORK

Filed Under: KU News, Scrum Tagged With: SBK, Scrum, Scrum Better With Kanban, Scrum Kanban Practitioner, SKP

Improve Your Scrum With Certified Kanban Training

October 11, 2023 by Rosie

Improve Your Scrum with Proven Kanban Practices, Principles, and Evolutionary Change Management

Jeff Sutherland, the co-founder of Scrum stated that; “58% of Scrum implementations are late, over budget, with unhappy customers.”

Don’t let it happen to you! 
Improve your Scrum with Certified Kanban training from Kanban University.

Our NEW Scrum Better with Kanban (SBK) course captures the lessons learned from Scrum teams that successfully evolved their way of working by using the evolutionary change found in the Kanban Method.

Our hands-on training will ensure that you walk away with a proven approach to introducing changes that will deliver results for your team and organization.

LEARN MORE ABOUT SCRUM BETTER WITH KANBAN
FIND A SCRUM BETTER WITH KANBAN CLASS

Is Scrum Better with Kanban the right course for you? 

If you are a Scrum practitioner, team lead, Scrum Master, Agile coach, or a manager who wants to understand an evolutionary approach to improving your Scrum using the Kanban practices, the Scrum Better with Kanban course is the perfect place to get started!

Drop us a message at KU@kanban.university and we’ll help you figure out the best route on the Kanban University development path.

Filed Under: KU News, Scrum Tagged With: Scrum

Managing Dependencies

August 2, 2023 by Rosie

Scrum Better With Kanban Blog Series

Are you part of a Scrum Team and having challenges? Do you wish there were some ways to “think outside the box” when it comes to the challenges you face? In this series of blog posts, we will explore some of the common problems that we have seen in Scrum implementations and look at how the Kanban Method can be used with your Scrum to “Scrum Better with Kanban.”

In our previous post, we shared how to handle the challenge of unplanned work. In this post, we’ll cover how to address the challenge of dependencies.

Dependencies Happen

If you’ve read the 2020 Scrum Guide, you know it calls for teams that are cross-functional (meaning that team members have all the skills necessary to create value in each Sprint). However, almost every team we’ve spoken with is missing one or more skills or capabilities to complete their work.

These capabilities are often provided by other teams, parts of the business (e.g., procurement don’t get us started), or by an organization outside of the business (e.g. vendors, regulators, etc.).

It’s not uncommon for teams to have missing capabilities which then create dependencies on other service providers. In the graphic below, you can see how a team doing great work needs some extra capability that they don’t already have on their team (e.g., an accessibility expert). In this post, we’ll explore how the Kanban Method can address this kind of challenge.

Dependencies can have a significant impact on your team’s capability to deliver value to customers. In one team, we observed that more than 66% of the lead time (e.g., the time the work took going from product backlog to done) was spent waiting for the work to be released by a separate “release team.”  

While we would all like to remove our dependencies, the truth is that they are sometimes needed either for economic, organizational, or regulatory reasons.  

Ways to Evolve

So, what are some ideas or options for managing dependencies? 

Make the dependency visually obvious 

Many teams we’ve spoken with will simply remove work from the board that is waiting on a dependency. The rationale for doing this is that the work is no longer something the team can work on, and it shouldn’t be represented on the board during the Sprint. 

While this is one solution, what can often happen is that the dependent work suddenly reappears as work to do while the team is in the middle of a Sprint. Sometimes the dependent work reappears in the following Sprint and everyone has forgotten about the dependent work.  

Rather than take it off the board, consider making space for the dependent work so it’s no longer gone. As seen in the graphic above, the work stays in place and the dependency is visualized using a “Help” sticky as a visual indicator that help from an accessibility service is needed. 

Many tracking tools provide means of marking dependencies. This could include placing a flag on the work or dedicating a special swim lane on the board for work that it stuck waiting on a dependency to give you what you need. You can also modify the title of the work to include an acronym like “DEP:”. 

Establish expectations

If your team relies on another service provider for particular capability, then it is reasonable to have expectations of the dependency. This means that by understanding how long it takes for another team to do their part, you can start to establish some expectations. Yes, we are talking about one of our favorite friends in the Kanban Method, lead time. In the context of requesting something from another team, the question that lead time can answer is “how long in advance do I need to make the request so that I can get it when I need it?” 

Using the board example above, let’s assume your team needs assistance from a shared service to provide the specialized accessibility capability. We’ll call that team; Team A. Team A has a lot of accessibility experts that you need advice from during the Design activity. Your team regularly makes request of Team A. When those requests are made, there is no expectation given for how long it might take to get the support your team needs so that you can continue to deliver the value on the work. 

This is a good time to start tracking when your team makes the request to Team A and when you get what you need from Team A. When we track lead time, we usually track it in number of days. As an example, let’s say that the last time your team asked Team A for support, it took 6 days.  

Over time, you can collect enough lead time data to have some meaningful conversations with Team A around expectations.  

Develop an escape hatch

Sometimes your team might feel like its request is being ignored by your dependent service provider. This is not uncommon when making sizeable requests.  

In one example, we discovered that a website team needed a large amount of data from a data team as part of their planned quarterly effort. The website team that needed the data was not allowed to have access to data unless they requested it from the data team. Effectively, this capability was not permitted on the website team as part of a management or leadership choice.  

Once the quarter started, this website team reached out to the data team to ask for the data. They were told that this request wouldn’t be supported or serviced in the current quarter. Yikes! How do you work with this challenging data team?  

Escalate – When you can’t get the service you need, you might want to consider escalating the risk and need of your team’s work. This means escalating to the managers and leaders accountable for the results of the teams. While this is not something you want to do frequently, it is sometimes the right thing to do when the risk of delay is known, and the impact is high for your work.  

Workaround – You can also work around the dependency. Sometimes a good approach is to avoid or work around the dependency to get the majority of what’s needed done. The website team may have been able to initially use what is called “stub” or fake data in the interim to develop the functionality needed without having the data from the data team. In a future quarter, the team could refine their development using the real data provided by the data team. Or the team may evolve to continue using this workaround and adopt it as a new “adaptation” for this type of dependency issue. 

Help – perhaps the answer is simply lending a hand to the data team. We see this pattern show up when teams value collaboration and coordination regardless of position in the organization. Developers help testers and testers help developers. Cats sleeping with dogs and dogs sleeping with cats. It can happen and it’s not a bad idea to offer help to a team that can’t support your request because they don’t have enough support on their team. 

Accept – While not always a great decision, the website team might have to accept the truth that things aren’t going to change. Plans will need to change. This means potentially reworking the schedule and forecasted effort for the quarter.  

In the case of our example, this is what the website team ultimately chose to do. They initially chose to escalate their dependency to get what they needed from the data team. During the escalation effort, they discovered that the data team was working on a request that was even more critical than their own project.  

While the website team had a valuable need to escalate their request to the data team, they ultimately chose to accept the data team’s current request was more valuable than their own request. The website team rebuilt their plans for the quarter.  

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Want to Share Your Opinion?

Please contact us and let us know what you think. Is this what you would do for dependencies? If not, what have you done? We’re always learning here at Kanban University. 

Learn More

Want to learn more about how Scrum can be better with Kanban? Then you might want to check out how to improve your Scrum with Kanban training.

Stay Tuned!

We will add more to this blog post over time. If you would like to be notified about other problems and potential solutions for Scrum Masters, please use the sign-up box below to join our Scrum email list. 

Filed Under: Scrum Tagged With: dependencies, Dependency Management

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