Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process

By Kenneth S Rubin (2012)

My Notes

Cynefin Framework

Different domains for categorising work:

• Obvious
  • The correct actions are known by all
  • E.g., writing an email
• Complicated
  • The correct actions are known by experts
  • E.g., writing a sales proposal
• Emergent
  • The correct actions are discovered as work progresses
  • E.g., the marshmallow problem
• Chaotic
  • You must take action (any action) without waiting, and then re-evaluate the situation
• Disorder
  • You’re acting as if you were in one domain but you’re really in another
  • E.g., you’re doing waterfall and ignoring the inherent uncertainty of the work

Agile vs Waterfall

In waterfall:

• Planning/designing/specifying happens you know the least about the work (at the beginning)
• Large batch transfers and doing things sequentially (first requirements, then design, etc) create overhead and critical paths, and encourages lots of work-in-progress
• Changing course in waterfall is hard (diverting from the plan can mean scrapping a whole lot of work that was already done: e.g., specifications, designs, plans)

In agile:

• Allows definitions to be delayed (to avoid the risk of building the wrong thing, take advantage of up to date information, etc)
• Cross-functional teams remove the need for batch transfers
• Sprints limit work-in-progress
• T-shaped resources and queue management (how?) remove critical paths
• Progress is measured by work delivered and validated; not a plan being followed

Focus on idle work (the baton, not the runners).

Always have extra good-to-haves so you can discard features at crunch time.

Levels of authority:

• Tell: manager makes decision
• Sell: manager convinces
• Consult: manager gets input and then makes decision
• Agree: make decision together
• Advise: manager advises, decision made by team
• Inquire: manager asks after team’s made the decision
• Delegate: manager let’s team do it all