Nokia Test: Where did it come from?

www.slashphone.com

In 2005, Certified Scrum Trainer Bas Vodde was coaching teams at Nokia Networks in Finland and developed the first Nokia test focused on Agile practices. He had hundreds of teams and wanted a simple way to determine if each team was doing the basics.

The Nokia test is a similar to a maintenance check on your car. It looks at whether your tires have air, your tank has gas, all cylinders are firing, and makes sure there are no critical missing pieces to your car. You should perform it before you go out for a drive with your Scrum team.

It does not provide the secret sauce for hyperperforming teams. However, it is the first line of the recipe for high performance. We give this test to Scrum teams at OpenView Venture Partners and to their portfolio companies as the venture group does not expect good performance from Scrum teams without passing the Nokia test. They are also very interested in predictability of release dates which is impossible without passing grades on the test.

On 19 June 2006, announced a joint venture with Nokia Networks to form Nokia Siemens Networks. Full operations started on 1 Apr 2007 . Combined 2005 revenues were estimate at 15 billion Euro. Bas Vodde moved to China to train Nokia Siemens Networks staff on Scrum and updated the Nokia Test to include Scrum practices.

In 2007, Jeff Sutherland tuned the Nokia Test for Scrum Certification and in 2008 developed a Nokia Test scoring system.

Each person on the team takes a sheet of paper and prepares to score eight questions on a scale of 1-10. Teams average their score and team scores are averaged across a training class or a company to determine the Nokia test score.

Scrum training classes average a score of 4 to 5 during the first morning of the course. At the end of the course, they feel they can bring their teams up to a 6 by the end of their next Sprint using what they learned in the course.