Scrum
312 bites tagged Scrum — interview questions with model answers, and 60-second explainers.
Relative Sizing: Estimate Effort, Not Hours
Relative sizing compares work items to each other instead of assigning absolute hours. A team agrees on a baseline task and estimates others as 'larger' or 'smaller' relative to it, often using story points. The footgun is mapping points back to hours.
What is a DEEP Product Backlog?
A DEEP backlog prevents the 'quicksand' of endless refinement with no progress. It helps teams align on customer value and create reliable plans. The footgun is that without a structured approach, backlogs become chaotic, eroding trust in agile forecasts.
Agile Themes: Connecting Work to Strategy
An agile theme is a strategic focus that groups related epics to achieve a larger business goal. Use themes to show stakeholders how specific features contribute to quarterly objectives like 'Improve Mobile Performance.'
INVEST: The Checklist for High-Quality User Stories
INVEST is a checklist for quality user stories: Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable. Use it in backlog grooming to ensure work is clear and sprint-ready.
Epic: The Agile Placeholder for Big Ideas
An Epic is a large user story that's too big for a single sprint, acting as a placeholder for a major feature. Use it to group related stories for features like 'user profile management.'
Mob Programming: The Whole Team on One Computer
Mob programming is like pair programming for the whole team: everyone works on one task, on one computer, at the same time. It's used for complex problems or onboarding. The footgun is letting it become a passive meeting instead of an active collaboration.
Pair Programming: Two Heads, One Keyboard
Think of pair programming as a continuous code review. One developer (the Driver) writes code while the other (the Navigator) reviews it in real-time. This is often used for complex tasks or onboarding. The footgun is letting one person dominate the keyboard.
Burndown Chart: A Project's Fuel Gauge
A burndown chart is a project's fuel gauge, showing work left versus time. Scrum teams use it to track sprint progress and predict completion. The footgun is treating it as a performance report instead of a conversation starter about blockers.
Planning Poker: Avoid Groupthink in Estimates
Planning poker avoids groupthink in effort estimation. Team members reveal estimates simultaneously using cards, preventing the first number spoken from anchoring everyone else. It's used in Agile to size up tasks.
The Four Stances of an Agile Coach
An agile coach isn't just a senior Scrum Master; they operate from four stances: teaching, mentoring, facilitating, and professional coaching. This model helps them choose the right approach to develop a team's capability, not just run ceremonies.
Powerful Questions: Sparking Discovery, Not Just Answers
Powerful questions spark discovery rather than demand a specific answer. Use them in retrospectives or when a team is stuck to unlock new solutions. The footgun is asking a leading question disguised as an open one, which shuts down creativity.
Agile Coaching: Teacher, Mentor, Facilitator, Coach
An Agile Coach isn't just a senior Scrum Master, but a guide helping teams find their own path to high performance. They support teams by teaching, mentoring, facilitating, and coaching to improve outcomes.
Tuckman's Stages: Why Teams Must Storm Before They Perform
Teams evolve through predictable phases, not starting out fully effective. A team must pass through forming, storming (conflict), and norming (resolution) to reach high performance.
Servant Leadership: Serve First, Lead Second
A servant-leader inverts the power pyramid, focusing on their team's growth over their own power. This is common in Agile, where scrum masters remove blockers to help developers perform at their best.
Definition of Ready (DoR): The Bouncer for Your Sprint
The Definition of Ready (DoR) is the bouncer for your sprint, a checklist ensuring a user story is clear and actionable before the team commits to it. It prevents starting work on half-baked ideas. The footgun is making it too rigid, creating a bottleneck.
User Story Mapping: From Backlog to Value Map
User Story Mapping reframes your backlog from a feature list into a map of the user's journey, focusing on delivering outcomes customers value. It helps teams prioritize work by visualizing the whole experience.
The MoSCoW Method: Prioritizing for Fixed Deadlines
The MoSCoW method protects deadlines by sorting work into four buckets: Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won't Have this time. It's used in agile projects with fixed timelines to ensure critical features ship.
User Stories: Features from the User's Perspective
A user story is an informal, natural language description of a software feature from the end user's viewpoint. Used in agile development, they're written by stakeholders like clients or developers on Post-its or in apps.
User Stories: What Users Want, and Why
A User Story is a simple description of a feature from the user's perspective, focusing on the 'who, what, and why' instead of technical details. It's the primary unit of work in Agile, building a shared understanding of what to build.
The Scrum Master: A Coach, Not a Manager
A Scrum Master is a servant-leader who coaches a team on Scrum practices, not a project manager who assigns tasks. They facilitate events and remove impediments. The footgun is treating them as a team admin, which undermines the team's self-organization.
The Daily Scrum: A 15-Minute Team Sync
The Daily Scrum isn't just a status update; it's a 15-minute planning session for the next 24 hours. Team members sync on progress, identify blockers, and adjust their plan for the day. The footgun is treating it as a report to a manager.
The Sprint: A Timeboxed Rhythm for Work
A sprint is a fixed-length container, typically 1-4 weeks, where a team turns ideas into a valuable product increment. Sprints give a predictable rhythm to software teams and marketing campaigns. The footgun is treating a sprint as a mini-waterfall project.
Empirical Process Control: Steer by Observing, Not by Plan
Empirical process control means steering by observation, not by a rigid upfront plan. Scrum uses this to tackle complex problems, inspecting real work in Sprints to adapt. The footgun is fake transparency—if artifacts hide problems, you're steering blind.
The Agile Manifesto: A Shift in Software Values
The Agile Manifesto is a value system, not a rigid process. It prioritizes people, working software, customer collaboration, and adapting to change over rigid plans and documentation. This philosophy underpins frameworks like Scrum.
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