Values provide direction for a team’s work. Scrum consists of five values essential for a Scrum Team to succeed. As a Scrum Master, I often consider how practices support Scrum values, allowing us to align new initiatives with Scrum. Our mobbing experiment is still ongoing, which leads me to think about how mobbing supports Scrum Values. The Scrum Team commits to achieving its goals and to supporting each other. Their primary focus is on the work of the Sprint to make the best possible progress toward these goals. The Scrum Team and its stakeholders are open about the work and the challenges. Scrum Team members respect each other to be capable, independent people, and are respected as such by the people with whom they work. The Scrum Team members have the courage to do the right thing, to work on tough problems. ...

In my passage about the myth of lengthy Scrum meetings two weeks ago, I mentioned that people often misinterpret the Scrum events and leave all the pre-Scrum meetings to exist. Code review is a common practice in many software development teams nowadays. There are various styles of code review, each serving different purposes. In traditional development teams, the developer submits their code to the source control, and a more experienced developer checks the code quality and logic before approving it for deployment. However, this process has been largely replaced by continuous integration tools like SonarQube. ...

Ricoh GR was my 3rd camera after I began my photography journey, bought in 2013. Before that, I was using the Canon EOS 6D. The Canon EOS 6D was a heavy DSLR that I could not bring everywhere all the time. I wanted a compact, high-quality camera so that I could take photos even when my Canon EOS 6D was not available. In the first few months, I was happy with the Ricoh GR. It fit in my pocket, and I brought it everywhere, taking many photos. However, I noticed a strange spot in all the photos I took with the Ricoh GR. I realised that there was dust inside the CMOS. After researching on the Internet, I discovered that dust issues are common among Ricoh GR users. ...

More teams within my company have been adopting the Scrum framework to enhance their product development process. Occasionally, I have the opportunity to engage in conversations with the developers and Scrum Masters from these teams. Among the various comments and discussions about Scrum, the most common issue raised is the abundance of lengthy meetings. Their managers complain that their teams are spending more time in meetings since implementing Scrum. However, is this issue truly caused by Scrum? When I presented my team’s weekly calendar to them, they were astonished by its brevity and simplicity. ...

Since last year, I have been logging the books I have read. Last year, I read 15 books. It is not an impressive number for someone who wants to develop a reading habit. However, for me, it is a significant achievement. In addition to reading books, I have subscribed to several podcast channels on Agile and productivity and have spent over a thousand hours immersed in them. “How did you manage that?” my friend asked, who wants to cut down on mindlessly scrolling through social media. “You cannot possibly have more than 24 hours a day to do all these things.” ...

As a Scrum Master of the team, I often raise questions to stimulate the team’s discussion and improve their understanding of Scrum and other frameworks or practices we use. “It’s Thursday and the fourth day of our 5-day Sprint,” I said, “If I pull a Product Backlog Item from the Backlog, I have to finish it by tomorrow, or else the Work Item Age will be increased by 2. Should I pull it or slice it to guarantee I can finish it by tomorrow?” ...

“I spent the whole night until 2 am packing my luggage,” said my colleague, who is travelling to Sapporo. The next morning, he said he packed until 5 am. After months of struggles at the office, people often go on vacation. They travel to different places and feel like escaping from the real world. The intention is to relax and hopefully recharge before going back to work. Once they have decided to escape the real world, they spend a month researching the place they will visit. ...

Several weeks ago, there was a meetup at my company, targeting Scrum Masters to share their experience with their teams. A Scrum Master shared how several Scrum teams within his area work. “Let me give you some advice,” said one of the attendees, “You should do blah blah blah…” After the attendee’s advice, the presenting Scrum Master immediately denied the advice and explained a lot. Tension built up. The debate, filled with “No, I mean…”, lasted several minutes until the facilitator stepped in to end it. ...

Every system operates under specific conditions, including Kanban with Flow Metrics. Of the 4 Flow Metrics, it is important to understand that Kanban with Flow Metrics is supported by Little’s Law. Little’s Law states that the average number of customers in a stable system is equal to the average arrival rate multiplied by the average time a customer spends in the system. To uphold Little’s Law, the system must be in a steady-state condition. ...

Last time, I described how my team applies Flow Metrics with Scrum. Although we don’t often estimate the short-term delivery, we are sometimes asked when a big feature will be completed. In the Story Points era, we used Story Points and calculated the average velocity of the previous 3 to 5 sprints for forecasting. In theory, averaging is the easiest way to forecast. However, in reality, unexpected situations may arise. For example, someone may call in sick, there may be a public holiday in the middle of the Sprint, or a PBI may be blocked by external parties. It is easy to fall into the trap of relying solely on averages, resulting in an unrealistic forecast. Moreover, communicating Story Points to stakeholders can be challenging due to their inherent ambiguity. In such situations, Monte Carlo Simulation comes into play. ...