Ongoing notes for the SCRUM Master Certification (CSM) courses.

• AGILE Manifesto
• AGILE Principles
• Scrum Guide

1. Exam Details
2. General Concepts
3. AGILE/Scrum
4. Scrum Roles
5. Scrum Objects
6. Scrum Events

• Online exam (CSM) (available 90 days at the end of training)
• 1 hour to complete, 50 questions (37 questions required to pass)

• Valid for 2 years, requires renewal
• Renewal can be done with

1. 20 hours of SCRUM education (SCRUM Education Units) + $100 renewal fee
2. Take another CSM SCRUM master course (Just like this one)

• Scrum: A lightweight framework that adopts an AGILE approach and creates an adaptive structure for solving problems.
• Backlog: A dynamically changing collection of pending tasks that are sorted by priority.
• Sprint Backlog: A backlog where all tasks are planned to be done inside of a specific sprint.
• Timebox: A timebox is a previously agreed period of time during which a person or a team works steadily towards completion of some goal.
• Defined Process Control: Following a pre-defined process in a linear fashion to accomplish some goal. (Analyze, plan, execute, waterfall methodology is a real world example)
• Empirical Process Control: A more fluid, adaptable process for solving problems by which experience informs us on what to do next.
• Sprint Goal: The purpose or target(s) of a sprint; the desired end result. Not limited to material results- could include lessons or new knowledge.
• Increment: A concrete stepping stone toward the Product Goal. Tangible output, doesn't tell you anything about the overall outcome.

• Customer value
• Business value
• Knowledge value

• Simple (High certainty with business/technological requirements)
• Complicated (Medium certainty with business/technological requirements)
• Complex (Low certainty with business/technological requirements)

Workflow for complex problems: Plan, do, check, adapt. (PDCA)

Requirements for PDCA- 'Empirical Process Control':

• Transparency: Who is doing what, what is blocking us? Are we able to even see what is going on in our environment?
• Inspection: Are we able to analyze the different components/problems of our systems and extract useful information from them?
• Adaptation: Course correction, changing approach as needed. Are we able to change our approach as our requirements change?

Process, people, product.

Using empirical process control in a cyclic, iterative fashion to turn ideas into deliverables.

Product centric- not project centric.

• Process - Iterative, cyclical, empirical process control.
• People - Self organizing.
• Product - Turning an idea into a usable end product.

Scrum is a framework that allows a team to learn and adapt their process overtime in order to better solve complex problems in a fast, iterative way to produce a better result sooner. Scrum uses AGILE concepts and values.

• The market has begun requiring more highly complex systems, which AGILE is built to handle.
• We want to generate value more efficiently.
• We want to define business and technological requirements with a high level of certainty.
• Maintain the ability to efficiently change requirements as needed.

Definition: Helps to lead and coordinate scrum practice within a scrum team.

Responsibilities:

• Helping others to get to their goals via scrum
• Training team to follow scrum framework
• Facilitate scrum events as needed
• Help remove roadblocks/impediments
• Aid team in being self-organizing

Additional Notes

• To lead effectively, it's a good idea to communicate with your team directly about how they best work and design your process around that.

Definition: A person who owns the product.

Responsibilities:

• "Build the right product"
• Define the Product Goal
• Communicate the value of the product
• Ordering and reordering of the product backlog to maximize value

Definition: People who are building the product.

Responsibilities:

• "Build the product right"
• To build and develop the product according to the business requirements

A scrum framework will contain:

• 5x Events - Sprint, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective
• 3x Artifacts - Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Increment
• 3x Commitments - Product Goal, Sprint Goal, Definition of Done

Container event that defines a timebox for all other scrum events.

1. Take items from the top of the product backlog
2. Have a discussion about the items
3. Determine the sprint goal
4. Define a plan for meeting the sprint goal

Answer as many open questions/uncertainties as possible when building requirements.

Product Backlog

• Ordered in priority by the Product Owner mainly
• Consists of items that create value for the product
• Formulated to meet product goal

Additional notes:

• First sprint planning is going to be inaccurate- overtime estimations will get better as we set precedents and gain an idea of how long certain types of tasks will take.

• Set definitions for the different columns in a sprint board. "Done" may be up to interpretation, for example, and the team needs to specify criteria for when a task/ticket gets moved into a column.

Daily meetings, roughly 15 minutes, with the intention to very quickly discuss progress and allow adjustments to the sprint plan as needed to best adhere to the sprint goal.

Scrum team presents to the stakeholders the result of the sprint's work.

Highly focused on the product. Receiving feedback from stakeholders. Determine if desired value was met.

Inspect and adapt the interactions, processes, tooling, quality to reflect on what could have been done better.

Select specific executable actions that will improve our process next sprint (if possible).