Course Schedule

Week 1: Scrum Simulation
Delegates are thrown in at the deep end and asked to produce a working product in 30 minutes based on a backlog of requirements. It is often surprising to the delegates how they are able to organise themselves around this challenge. A review is then held to see what progress was made, whether features met expectations, and what should be done next. Incorrect assumptions are quickly identified and adjusted. Finally, a retrospective is held, allowing teams to improve on their process and deal with challenges they experienced; such as poor technical choices or ineffective collaboration.
This case study project is continued with up to four sprints over the two-day class, allowing delegates to learn some theory and then put it straight into practice. As teams learn more about themselves and their product, they are able to adapt their plan to meet changing demands.

Week 1 Assignment: Understand how we work
Facilitate a discussion within your organisation about your current process and practices used for product development and create an explicit description of them.

Week 2: The Scrum Framework
Having experienced considerable uncertainty in the first sprint, delegates explore the uncertainties of complex software product delivery by considering what might change with regard to requirements, technology and people.
Students then dive into the Scrum framework itself:

• Scrum roles: product owner; development team; scrum master.
• Scrum artefacts: product backlog; sprint backlog; increment.
• Scrum events: sprint; sprint planning; daily scrum; sprint review; sprint retrospective.

Delegates then assign themselves roles and conduct a sprint planning session for the next sprint in the simulation.

Week 2 Assignment: Scrum exists only in its entirety
Invitation to apply learnings in your working environment:
Identify deviations of your current process from Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide and apply at least one change that reduces the differences.

Week 3: Apply the Scrum Framework – Sprint Simulation
Having experienced uncertainty and complexity in week 1 now is the opportunity to see how the ideas learned in week 2 can help. Participants will have the opportunity to run a second sprint simulation, but this time:

• With people assigned accountabilities of Scrum Master, Product Owner and Developer
• Starting with a Sprint Planning session
• Using backlogs and boards to visualise work
• Applying a Definition of Done
• Concluding with a Review and Retrospective

Week 3 Assignment: Boundaries are important for self-management
Through an evaluation of the current Scrum implementation, identify opportunities for improvement, demonstrate how establishing boundaries aligned with the Scrum Framework can enhance self-management, and implement changes that enable the team to work more empirically and achieve their goals more effectively.

Week 4: Mastering Scrum, Planning, Estimating and Forecasting
Scrum is founded on some principles that are the key to moving beyond mechanical scrum where teams focus solely on showing up for a daily meeting and actually take control. We’ll explore the ideas of self-organisation, cross-functional teams and cross-functional people and the accountabilities that arise from developers owning their sprint backlog.

• Delegates will learn the full set of complementary techniques used by many scrum teams to plan and track progress:
• Story point estimation with planning poker.
• Burn-down charts and velocity.
• Effective use of sprint reviews to keep stakeholders closely involved and informed.

Week 4 Assignment: Agile planning in working empirically
By evaluating your team’s current process, identify how it affects the ability to work in an empirical way and develop a plan to apply at least one improvement to enhance agile planning to assess the impact of this change.

Week 5: Final Sprint – Living the Scrum Values
The final Sprint is an opportunity to overcome the things that might be holding a team back from fully engaging. The simulations often mimic reality, with behaviours including:

• Not fully engaging with the purpose of the product
• Focusing on “finishing tickets” rather than delivering value
• Sub-optimal team dynamics

This short simulation gives an opportunity to experiment with techniques that can help when scaled up from a 30-minute exercise to a Sprint of several weeks.

Week 5: Assignment: Continuous Improvement in a Scrum Team
Assess the interactions between your Scrum Team(s) and external individuals or groups to pinpoint any challenges at these interfaces. Then, implement at least one improvement and measure its impact on the team’s ability to work empirically and achieve their goals.

Week 6: Beginning your Scrum Transformation
The course concludes with practical tips on how to go about kicking off a scrum transformation, including establishing a sense of purpose amongst everyone involved, deciding whether or not Scrum is the right process for the work at hand and finally producing a backlog of things that need to be put in place. This backlog is specific to the attendees and may alternatively serve as an improvement backlog for established teams.

Week 6 Assignment: Run your plan and prepare for the assessment
There will be some clear actionable steps in place to continue your team’s journey to apply Scrum. We will also provide follow-on resources and preparation advice for the PSM-I assessment.

Scrum Team Immersion Programme Outcomes
Delegates will leave with a backlog of things they can do as soon as they get back to work. Whether they are planning on forming a new scrum team, or improving their existing process, everyone will leave with something tangible to do.