Stefan Wolpers

Scrum Master Interview Questions (6): The Sprint Planning

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-10-17 Agile and Scrum

TL; DR: Scrum Master Interview (6): Demand Creates Supply and the Job Market for Agile Practitioners is No Exception

Scrum has proven time and again to be the most popular framework for software development. Given that software is eating the world, a seasoned Scrum Master is nowadays in high demand. And that demand causes the market entry of new professionals from other project management branches, probably believing that reading one or two Scrum books will be sufficient. Which makes any Scrum Master interview a challenging task.

Suppose you are looking to fill a position for a Scrum Master (or agile coach) in your organization. In that case, you may find the following 73 interview questions helpful in identifying the right candidate. They are derived from my sixteen years of practical experience with Scrum and XP, serving as Product Owner and Scrum Master. So far, I have interviewed dozens of Scrum Master candidates on behalf of my clients. This article covers a new set of questions on Sprint Planning.

So far, this Scrum Master interview guide has been downloaded more than 25,000 times.

73 Scrum Master Interview Questions to Identify Suitable Candidates — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #364: Empowered Product Teams? Shifting Product Culture, Experimentation, Don’t Let ‘Done’ Be Misunderstood

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-10-14 News

TL; DR: Empowered Product Teams? — Food for Agile Thought #364

Welcome to the 364th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,083 peers. This week, we share the real-life case of an organization embracing Marty Cagan’s ‘empowered product teams (EPT)’ model entirely—with underwhelming results. Moreover, we ask why the concept of “Done” seems to be constantly misunderstood in organizations while we explore why engineering speed drops over time and what you can do about it. Additionally, we delve into an “understanding of management (managing), self-managing, and the manager role.”

Then, we consider that many transformations fail because they lack a focus on product leadership and cover the challenges of managing a product in its mature state, from figuring out whether your product has achieved that stage to the four top-handling strategies. Also, Doc Norton analyzes the path from complexity to our need for certainty to experimentation based on observations, questions, hypotheses, methods, and results, and we illuminate the importance of Sprint Goals for a Scrum team’s success.

Finally, we listen to Allan Kelly proposing a seven-step, lightweight process to develop products, building on his previous work, and appreciate a new exercise from John Cutler to help teams to move from focusing on how they measure to what they measure. Lastly, Kellan Elliott-McCrea reflects on the annual planning ritual in engineering, from the futility of a bottom-up approach to constraints and dependencies.

Food for Agile Thought #364: Empowered Product Teams? Shifting Product Culture, Experimentation, Don’t Let ‘Done’ Be Misunderstood — Age-of-Product.com

Nine Sprint Goal Principles to Get Your Scrum Team Going

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-10-09 Agile and Scrum

TL; DR: Nine Sprint Goal Principles

In Scrum, the Sprint Goal serves as the spotlight that provides transparency to the Sprint Backlog, as the flag that allows the team to rally, and the one thing that provides focus and cohesion. No Scrum team has ever been able to reap the benefits of the framework to the fullest extent without making the Sprint Goal a cornerstone of its efforts. The following nine Sprint Goal principles point at critical issues any Scrum team needs to consider on its path to excellence.

Nine Sprint Goal Principles to Get Your Scrum Team Going — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #363: Tracking Learnings, Impact Mapping for Fun & Profit, Games as Change Tools, DORA 2022 Accelerate Report

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-10-07 News

TL; DR: Tracking Learnings, Impact Mapping for Fun & Profit — Food for Agile Thought #363

Welcome to the 363rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,042 peers. This week, we delve into tracking learnings and what to do with all the “stuff” that continuous product discovery produces. Also, we analyze the utility of agile games as change-supporting tools and share a decision-making approach to scaling, from “don’t scale” to “managing dependencies between work to be done.” Finally, we consider the fact that “simple” covers a vast ground and has the potential to cause confusion and misinterpretation. (You may want to reconsider your KISS approach.)

Then, we advocate getting comfortable with impact mapping when you have a “vague goal but haven’t yet done a good exploration of how to get there.” Again, we also stress the importance of product discovery, given that we all love “our ideas” when building new businesses, before we point out five practices that will enable your team to take full advantage of the Product Backlog as a tactical tool.

Finally, we appreciate Paulo Caroli’s curated list of popular practices for organizing meetings; he also provides a downloadable PDF and a Mural template. On top of that, Andrea Saez shares the “Customer Value Explorer,” a canvas to map customer value against business objectives. Lastly, Google Cloud published the “2022 Accelerate State of DevOps Report,” focusing on security.

Food for Agile Thought #363: Tracking Learnings, Impact Mapping for Fun & Profit, Games as Change Tools, DORA 2022 Accelerate Report — Age-of-Product.com

Allan Kelly: Honey, I Shrunk the Backlog — Hands-on Agile 44

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-10-03 Agile and ScrumVideosWebinars

TL; DR: HoA #44: Honey, I Shrunk the Backlog w/ Allan Kelly

In this energizing 44th Hands-on Agile session on product backlog management, Allan Kelly clarified one thing: The backlog was a great idea until it wasn’t. Many successful teams deliver backlog items daily, but their backlogs aren’t getting smaller. The never-ending backlog overshadows delivery success. Product discovery, dual-track agile, OKRs, etc., make it worse by accelerating backlog growth without taking any of the rotting items away.

Learn more about Allan’s remedy for oversized product backlogs in less than an hour.

Allan Kelly: Honey, I Shrunk the Backlog — Hands-on Agile 44 — Age-of-Product.com

📺 Watch the video now: Allan Kelly: Honey, I Shrunk the Backlog — Hands-on Agile 44.

Food for Agile Thought #362: Agile Military, Product Strategy Failure Patterns, DesignOps 101, SAFe® for Decision Makers

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-09-30 News

TL; DR: Agile Military — Food for Agile Thought #362

Welcome to the 362nd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,013 peers. This week, we delve into lessons learned on leadership in the agile military. We also read a curated collection of articles, “facts, evidence, and opinions from relevant sources without vested interests” on the usefulness of SAFe® and analyze common reasons why organizations do not reap the expected benefits of becoming Agile. Moreover, we ask: Do we need a CUO, a Chief Unblocking Officer?

Then, we dissect strategy anti-patterns, from committing too early to prospective customers to dodging controversial calls while delving into product leadership, team objectives, and the importance of context and clarity. Also, Jon Moore and Marty Cagan continued their article series, detailing why consequential transformations to product-led organizations require different decision processes, and Kate Kaplan created an overview of the human side of DesignOps: who is doing what and talking to whom?

Finally, we sketch various mental models, concepts, and “laws” helpful to Scrum Masters and agile coaches and delve into the relationship between hypothesis-driven development, validation, and the minimum viable product. Lastly, we learn that just because your Sprint board has columns and cards does not mean it is a Kanban board.