Scrum Log Jeff Sutherland

Scrum is an Agile development framework that Jeff Sutherland invented at Easel Corporation in 1993. Jeff worked with Ken Schwaber to formalize Scrum at OOPSLA'95. Together, they extended and enhanced Scrum at many software companies and helped write the Agile Manifesto.

Saturday, July 04, 2009

Ready: The Dynamic Model of Scrum

I give CSM trainings with Jeff Sutherland, and about half a year ago he had put something in his material called "the dynamic model of Scrum". The essential feature was the addition of a READY state opposite the DONE state. The idea here is that a team needs to be in a stable, known situation to be able to perform well. It immediately struck a chord with me: I had seen so many teams thrash because the Product Owner could not give them a clear objective, the READY state was exactly the goal to work to. But what was it really, and how do you get there? By now I think I've got some good answers to these questions.


The two Scrum states, READY and DONE
Here's a picture from my Scrum course material to illustrate the concept...

What does the READY state do?

In a self-organizing team setting a clear destination it very important: self-organization does not exist if you have nothing to organize TO. The READY state prevents team thrashing by ensuring that the preconditions for a good Sprint execution have been met. More ...

For a description of how to systematically quadruple velocity of a Scrum team by focusing on ready  and done states see:

C. Jakobsen and J. Sutherland, "Scrum and CMMI – Going from Good to Great: are you ready-ready to be done-done?," in Agile 2009, Chicago, 2009.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Nokia Test: Online


The latest version of the Nokia test is now ready for online scoring in French and English thanks to Antoine Vernois. We are finding that for teams that can establish a baseline velocity, raising the score two points will typically double velocity and quality. Raising to over 9 out of 10 will triple velocity.

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