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The Do’s and Don’ts of Scrum

For the Scrum Master:

  •  ✔ Facilitate the product owner to maintain and prioritize the Product Backlog and own the business decisions;
  •  ✔ Help the team members to come up with most realistic estimations they can;
  •  ✔ Help the team members to make right technology decision;
  •  ✔ Inspire the team members to pull and own the tasks and work with them to remove any impediments that are holding them back to achieve those tasks;
  •  ✔ Facilitate self-organization within the team.
  •  ✖ Own the product decisions on Product Owner’s behalf;
  •  ✖ Make estimates on team’s behalf;
  •  ✖ Make the technology decisions on team’s behalf;
  •  ✖ Assign the tasks to the team members;
  •  ✖ Try to manage the team.

For the Product Owner:

  •  ✔ Define the features of the product;
  •  ✔ Decide on release date and content;
  •  ✔ Be responsible for the profitability of the product (ROI);
  •  ✔ Prioritize features according to market value;
  •  ✔ Adjust features and priority every 30 days, as needed;
  •  ✔ Accept or reject work results;
  •  ✔ Be responsible for the first of the three Scrum ceremonies: Scrum Planning.
  •  ✖ Attend the Daily Scrum Meetings (or if she/he does, is only there to hear an update);
  •  ✖ Attend the Retrospective meeting (although she/he can give feedback and may also receive feedback);
  •  ✖ Expect constantly improving velocity;
  •  ✖ Live apart from the team;
  •  ✖ Choose how much work will be accomplished in the sprint – the team will do this, based on the priorities she/he has set and what they feel they can accomplish. She/he is welcomed to give opinions and to move things in and out during the Sprint Planning Meeting;
  • ✖ Change anything within the sprint once it has started and she/he can-not add items to the sprint.

For the Agile Manager:

  • ✔ Do help build up your team as technical leaders and experts;
  • ✔ Do foster an environment where your team can engage directly with each other to solve problems;
  • ✔ Do communicate upward;
  • ✔ Do communicate outward to stakeholders, peers, or clients;
  • ✔ Do review your overarching project risks and be the person who’s thinking about what others are not thinking about;
  • ✔ Do help set a consistent, exciting, and achievable vision for the team, the product, or the organization;
  • ✔ Do become a strategic thinker.
  • ✖ Don’t be the team’s impediment;
  • ✖ Don’t micromanage;
  • ✖ Don’t feel like you need to review every web page or piece of functionality.
About author

Hadi Hatif is a Senior Business Analyst with 20 years of experience in the financial sector (both Retail and Wholesale Banking). He is an expert in the areas such as stakeholder management, organization, business analysis, business process management, requirement engineering and solution designs in order to deliver the project objectives.