In this episode, Mike is joined by Lucas Smith, an agile trainer, coach, and scrum master for LitheWorks, LLC who has over 14 years experience in software development, delivery, management, product development, coaching, and training. Lucas is one of only 50 Professional Scrum Trainers in the United States and in addition to being a Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) with Scrum.org he also holds the distinguished Level III Professional Scrum Master (PSM III) and Level II Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO II) certifications, as well as the Certified Scrum Professional (CSP), Certified Scrum Master (CSM), and Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) certifications through Scrum Alliance.
We use Scrum here at Asian Efficiency, so we’re thrilled Lucas is able to join us today to dive deep on the topic. If you’re new to Scrum, don’t worry – Mike and Lucas will give an introduction to how it works and share several scenarios where it could be useful for you, even if you aren’t a developer or don’t work remotely. They talk about why scrum is for everyone, the productivity benefits that come from using scrum, and how to implement it for yourself and your team. They share common mistakes people make when implementing scrum for the first time, share additional resources, and Lucas gives some pro tips to help you take scrum to another level.
Cheat Sheet
- How Lucas got introduced to Scrum as a software developer at Boeing [2:35]
- How Scrum evolved in order to tackle increasingly complex problems [4:23]
- The history and definition of Scrum [7:22]
- How a cross-functional team works and why it’s important [11:26]
- How a to execute an effective sprint [14:14]
- Why using Fibonacci numbers to estimate how long a task will take is so effective [21:42]
- The different roles on a Scrum team [26:08]
- The value of implementing Scrum [30:43]
- The different events of Scrum: daily Scrums, sprint review, and sprint retrospective [36:23]
- Visualization and transparency techniques for scrum [44:55]
- How to move from doing to done, and the meaning of the terms “burn up” and “burn down” [48:58]
- Recommended tools you can use to execute the Scrum method [57:30]
- The “3 times” rule [1:05:03]
- Tips for taking Scrum to the next level [1:07:56]
- Further reading on Scrum [1:14:02]
- Situations that might really benefit from the use of Scrum [1:18:06]
Links
- Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
- Kolbe index
- Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t
- Nobody Gets Credit for Fixing Problems That Never Happened
- The New New Product Development Game
- Trello
- Scrumy
- PlanITpoker
- JIRA
- VSTS
- Rally (CA Agile)
- VersionOne
- Asana
- Scrum Guide
- Scrum.org
- Scrum uses:
Connect with Lucas Smith
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Great episode ! By the end you mention a friend managing a marketing company with scrum in Asana. Would you have any link to content they’ve published on their journey to agility in marketing, or introduce me to your friend ? I’m currently struggling to implement agility, and especially scrum, in the marketing department in my company, so some insights would be very helpful. Thanks !