How can a Scrum Master help the team in creating high Value Increment ?

 Yes! It's really interesting that though like a Product Owner, a Scrum Master doesn't interact with the end user to understand the user requirements or problems or even doesn't much interact with the Stakeholders to get their feedback and unlike Developers, a Scrum Master also never develops & deliver Valuable Increment, so the question rises that if the Scrum Master is neither accountable for Product Backlog Management nor Development, how a Scrum Master can help the team in creating high Value Increment.

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I believe, one word which answers the question is "Facilitation".

Yes! You are right. Scrum Master facilitates the Product Owner in creating effective Product Goal & Product Backlog Management meanwhile also facilitates the Scrum team to turn an idea into Value as well as facilitates the Stakeholder's collaboration with the Scrum Team whenever needed  for inspection and adaptation.  

Let's understand it with an enchanting example, a mother may not be too much educated to teach her children to get good marks but we all know a mother facilitates their children with all possible ways to get good marks by clearing impediments such as by providing a study space & table light, a glass of milk for better memory, maintaining silent environment, boosting the kid's confidence and so on. Here, Mother acts as a Scrum Master who facilitates her Children (Developers) by clearing impediments that help her children to study hard and write papers properly to deliver good marks (Value).

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As we all might have gone through Scrum Guide 2020, which asserts that Scrum Master is accountable to establish Scrum within Scrum Team & Organization as well as to increase the effectiveness of the Scrum Team within Scrum Framework. Now, 2 questions which may pop up in our mind are how a Scrum Master can help the team to adopt & practice Scrum and how a Scrum Master can help the Scrum Team to increase its effectiveness within Scrum framework.

Related :   How does a Product Owner contribute to make the Increment, Valuable !

One of Scrum Master's accountability is, How a Scrum Master can establish Scrum within the team & the organization ?

I believe a Scrum Master should inculcate a healthy Scrum Culture within the team & the organization where the team understands & embodies Scrum Values, Scrum Theory, Scrum Rules & Practices. The most important part is that a Scrum Master should create an opportunity for the team to live those Scrum Values & Theory which can only be possible when the Scrum Team practices Scrum Values & Theory everyday in every Sprint during each of the Scrum Ceremonies as well as during self-managing & cross-functioning in order to  deliver Value based Increment over Volume based Increment. 

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Time to time, even during Scrum Retrospective, a Scrum Master should also set up a stage for Scrum Team to discuss the benefits of complex software development using Scrum so that the Scrum Team gets a clear picture about the significance of Scrum and can also clear their doubts. A Scrum Master should organize seminars, group meetings, one to one meetings, agile game events, Scrum guide based question answer sessions,  PPT presentation,  guest lectures by most successful Scrum Teams of the organization or by industrial experts to make the team learn from the real time examples about how Scrum philosophy increases the scope of learning and meanwhile decreases the risk of cost and effort to small time frame by allowing continuous iterations & increments in small cycles to develop a complex Value based Product over Volume based Product.

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As per Scrum Guide 2020, Developers should own the Sprint Backlog that means the ownership of Sprint Backlog is in the hand of Develops but in most cases it doesn't happen so I believe Scrum Master should create a healthy Scrum environment & nudge the Developers to take the Ownership of Sprint Backlog. I believe we should pull something from the work culture of Amazon where Jeff Bezos facilitates each of their employees to take  "Ownership of their Work" & do more & more "customer centric Obsession".

In a good Scrum Team, a Scrum Master reminds the developers for the accountability of their Sprint Backlog while in a great Scrum Team, developer holds developer accountable for the Sprint Backlog.

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Let's understand it with an enchanting example, suppose the Main Chef (Product Owner) pulls an order of spicy "Tomato Soap" from the customer and pushes the order to the junior chefs (developers) who pull the order to prepare (develop) spicy "Tomato Soap". Meanwhile the Main Chef (Product Owner) also pushes a set of tomatoes & needed spices (Product Backlog items) to the junior chefs (developers ) to make the Tomato Soap (Sprint Goal) which the junior chefs (developers) pull accordingly. Now the  junior chefs (developers) need to take the ownership of Sprint Backlog which encompasses tomatoes & the spices (Product Backlog items) to make the Tomato Soap (Sprint Goal) within a given time (Sprint).

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Scrum Master should also coach a Product Owner about Scrum and ensure that the Product Owner also lives Scrum Values. According to Scrum Guide, a Product Owner should behave like one of the Scrum Team members rather than a Manager who always believes in command and control philosophy for developing a Product. 

Indeed Scrum Values are also very helpful to a Product Owner where Product owner Focuses on the customer’s problems & requirements, Commits to stakeholders to deliver Value in a Sprint, Opens to the Scrum Team about the Product Goal & the Product Backlog Items, Respects the feedback of both the Stakeholders & the Scrum Team & shows Courage to optimize the Value of the Product resulting from the work of the Scrum Team.

In fact the first litmus test of Product Owner about practicing Scrum can be evaluated from the Product Owner's way of customer observation, engagement, & insinuation to find out "End User problem or requirements" because if the Product Owner's findings is wrong, the whole Design - Development - QA will yield Volume based Increment over Value Based Increment at the end of a Sprint which could be a waste for the end user.

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Add on to that, Stakeholders should also be trained to adopt & understand Scrum so that Stakeholders also practice agility actively & frequently to share their requirements, feedback and queries with the Product Owner at any point of a Sprint for the development of Valuable Increment. 

As a clap (development of Valuable Increment) demands both the hands i.e a right hand (Scrum Team) as well as a left hand (Stakeholders).

Who makes decisions in Scrum ?

A Scrum Master should make the Scrum Team understand that it is the developers who should make decisions in a Sprint as together they are playing football and making goals (turning Product Backlog items together into Value) so they know the situation better than the coach  (Product Owner or Scrum Master) who are seating and watching the game outside of the playground, about when & who (self-managing) need to push & pull the ball from one another so that the players (Developers) can confuse their competitors and get success to make the goal (achieve Sprint Goal) i.e to deliver Valuable Increment. So the answer of "Who makes the Decision" helps the Scrum Master to insinuate whether a Team is marching on an Agile path or on a Waterfall path and hence should guide the team accordingly based on empiricism.

Read More : Why a delivered solution may not always be a Value !

One another Scrum Master's accountability is, How can a Scrum Master help a Scrum Team to improve its effectiveness within a Scrum Framework ?

I believe following are the ways where a Scrum Master should help the team to improve its effectiveness

a)  Recommending the Product Owner to use new techniques to engage with the customers and understand the end user core problem & requirements in a more better way as that is the first and foremost criteria to deliver the usable Increment as the Scrum Guide 2020 says that "the Increment is only Valuable when it is used by the end user".

b) Facilitating the Product Owner in creating effective Product Backlog Management which should be focused on the following criteria like 1. customer satisfaction 2. business revenue 3. Online traffic & conversion 4. risk & uncertainties 5. cost

c) Ensuring that developers are empowered & always get an opportunity to self-manage in order to use their collective intelligence to make their decisions and adapt as soon as they inspect any deviation rather than being spoon fed.

d) Encouraging industrial standard coding, Pair programming, Peer Review, Pair Ownership (where 2 developers take the Ownership of a Product Backlog item right from Design - Development - QA till its release), Pair Presentation at Sprint Retrospective, WIP limit for better self-managing & cross-functioning and to avoid multi-tasking.

e) Organizing team based games like volleyball game where the team collaborates together to play & win the game. Even Organizing Scrum Quiz competition where the team collaborates to discuss together to answer question.

f) Organizing events where the developers mirror themselves about what talent they possess beyond the boundary of Development like painting & music events, GK quizzes, story telling, jokes & so on to open the right brain of the developers for creativity & leadership.

g) Do genuine appreciation to the respective Scrum team members for their valuable contribution & for the help and guidance by them to their peer team members to keep the team motivated & vibrant.

h) Create a healthy conversation environment where the team’s conflict is focused on ideas over attitude & anger to discover diverge aspects of customer problem & possible solutions to finally converge the most precise core problem & solution.

i) Ensure that the discussion is focused towards the Sprint Goal and everybody participates in it. Meanwhile create a safe environment for introverts, extroverts & ambiverts so that every member of the team feels safe to share their unsafe views either by telling or writing.

Finally I want to add my opinion that by using the above tools & techniques, a super Scrum Master should create an environment where the Scrum Team accomplishes their accountability for Valuable Product Development with pleasure over pressure.

As a Scrum Master you have been leading a team which works on both software and hardware components. Your organisation has decided to move to Agile framework from the pure Waterfall model after looking at the substantial advantages Agile brings to the table. You along with the team have enthusiastically supported this move as it helps you deliver quality software without the bureaucracy of Waterfall model. However, there is one fly in this ointment. What do you do with the phase gate testing strategy that your organisation operates? And mostly manual testing at that! How do you modify or reuse these in order to maximize your product quality? If you want to know of a template for such a transition, read on.

 The Template 

Phase gate test strategy - Waterfall model has strict quality guidelines and metrics which need to be followed in both spirit and letter. If an organisation follows Waterfall model or its multiple variants such as Spiral model, V model etc, it will need to have a test strategy document which gives details regarding how the organisation through its test team plans to implement the quality control it desires.

                                            OR

As can be seen from above diagrams, regardless of which flavor is used, Waterfall has extremely stringent requirements regarding the test strategies to be used. Hence, you would be having an established order of testing activities provided in strategy document which should have:

Test planning

Test Environment setup

Test tools and setup

Test case review

Unit testing

Functional testing

System Testing

Integration testing 

Acceptance testing

Stability testing

Certification testing

Resource planning

 The various levels of testing is targeted at various levels of development. There might be additions to this but in general, these or a combination of these activities would be listed in the strategy document. Now let us add the complexities of phase gate development to above scenario.

Various levels of test cases are designed during the design phase. Validation team comes up with Integration, Acceptance, System and Feature Test cases based on the requirements and developmental activity. Once these have been accepted through design review process, the testing activity starts. Please note that Unit Testing as an activity is retained with development team. Once the development team delivers features in Phase gates, feature testing takes place. In case System testing can start earlier than the Final phase, it is also started early. Integration and Acceptance testing occurs where multiple modules from multiple teams are integrated onto a single Product line. Stability testing starts only when the Product is completed. This then is a short primer about Testing strategies used in Waterfall.

And herein lies our problem. Following Agile principles there are no phase gates. The items delivered by Scrum Teams are expected to be Product increments. Ideally speaking therefore, once Product Backlog Items (PBIs) are delivered by teams, they are expected to be working as a final Product which is shippable. Hence, the delivered PBIs should have been completely tested through all test variants (Functional, System, Integration etc). How do we bridge the gap between this expectation and the existing reality of Phase Gate testing already available before the transition to Agile is completed?

 Implementation

The implementation of our modification needs to be done in 2 phases -

1. Add slices of test variants - Each Sprint consists of PBIs which are READY. To resolve the test strategy dilemma you need to ensure that no PBI is termed READY till it has a thorough test plan. The test plan should be drawn up under the guidance of the validation members who are part of the Scrum team (after all the team is cross-functional). There are 2 very important functions of the Scrum Master here:

Help in guiding the team to include validation members during self-organizing activities to make it truly cross-functional

Ensuring that Scrum principles are adhered to, where, testing is not a separate activity and needs to be carried out by each individual. 

The guidance from validation member is crucial at this juncture. She needs to ensure that all PBIs which are targeted for the Sprint should have been properly tested. Slices of test cases from Functional, System, Integration and if possible Stability testing pertaining to the specific Sprint Backlog needs to be added to the Sprint activities. Although all Scrum members are responsible for carrying out the testing, Validation members should ensure that the Definition of Done (DoD) for each PBI should ensure correct evaluation of test cases. However, there arises a different problem. 

Let us say you are in the Sprint planning session. PBIs 1,2 and 4 are marked as most important by the Product Owner (PO) and are READY. As per prioritization principle, Sprint Backlog should be populated with these 3 items.

However, validation members inform that PBIs 1,2 and 3 mark a block which can be adequately tested (through all variants). PBI 4 is from a different block which cannot be tested as standalone. What should be done in this scenario? The solution is to get PBIs 1,2 and 3 READY and in Sprint backlog. It is more important to provide a shippable increment of correct quality than an increment of low quality. 

Please note however, that this issue can be corrected once you move to the next phase of transition.

There is 1 significant item overlooked in above scenario. Stability and Stress testing! And I have not mentioned those to be added onto the DoD because it might be a bit difficult to do so. Scrum members doing manual stability testing for 24 hours - 48 hours do not tend to generate correct information. Hence, it is up to the Scrum team to decide how to introduce Stability and Stress testing for the PBIs they deliver. It might be that they slice up this variant as well and accept testing for up to 4-8 hours under stress scenarios. Or it might be that they completely give up stability testing to a system team which keeps on doing this activity throughout all Sprints. My suggestion is to go for the first option and introduce a degree of stability for your delivered increments.

2. Automate testing - As a Scrum Master you have introduced mini test planning sessions as part of your Sprint planning. Hence, you are now providing high quality shippable increments as part of your Sprint deliverable. 

There are a couple of problems still seen which is visible through your teams outwards facing artifacts. 

The velocity achieved by the team is generally low or       lower than achievable. 

There are defects which still evade the Scrum teams.       This impacts overall bandwidth and health of Scrum teams.

We need to now move on to the next phase of test strategy modification. Test automation activities need to be supported by the teams to rectify above mentioned problems. The goal of this activity is to establish a process, where the scrum team member should be able to trigger a CI build and automated testing from his work machine after developing code. Once the testing is over, it should give the confidence to all stakeholders that the testing has been thorough and will not cause defects, regressions or performance degradation in the product. Automation is a huge subject, the scope of which cannot be completely dealt with in this blog. Following link for Agile Test Framework gives more details. Suffice to say that Automated testing is essential in releasing the full potential of your Scrum Team.  

However, please note that introducing Automated testing is a decision for the management team and not for Scrum teams. The effort required for setting up Automation in some cases will be equal to the effort for the whole project. Such a large effort may or may not be desirable by all stakeholders. If possible C-level management needs to be involved to understand the utility of such a movement and cost.

One of the biggest arguments in favor of such a move is that without automation any movement towards scaling agile would not be effective.

A mechanism to introduce automation is to also introduce it through a phased manner where initially, Automated UI testing is carried out, which progresses to Automated service testing etc. This reduces the effort used for introducing automation while ensuring the system gradually moves towards a fully automated test strategy.

 Conclusion

​Before we conclude, we need to deal with a remaining aspect of our test strategy we have studiously ignored so far. The subject of Certification testing was left as this almost always assumes a philosophy of its own. Those of you who have handled Certifications by running and passing Certification test suites will accept that this is the proverbial 'Bull-in-a-China-Shop'. It has the power to wreck your whole product if issues are not handled early. However, to simply start such testing requires almost all other aspects of the product to have been assessed for quality. What should the mechanism be for assimilating Certification testing within Sprint planning? 

Certification testing is too large for it to be broken into slices and taken into Sprint planning depending on PBIs taken in Sprint backlog. Instead, during initial stages of Agile transitioning, specific Sprints should be run for Certifications.

However, once Automation is setup, Test Driven Development (TDD) can be used quite effectively to handle Certification test suite within Sprints themselves. Certification test suites come with the advantage that test cases are defined in detail to start with and more often than not, ensure that system is more thoroughly tested than any given test specification.

Scrum is an Agile framework for managing projects that is widely used in software development, product management, and other industries. One of the key elements of the Scrum framework is the product backlog, which is a prioritized list of work items that need to be completed in order to deliver a valuable product or service to the end-users. The Scrum backlog team is responsible for maintaining the product backlog and ensuring that it is up-to-date, well-organized, and reflective of the current needs and priorities of the project. In this article, we will explore the role and importance of the Scrum backlog team.

The Scrum backlog team is a group of individuals who work together to maintain the product backlog. The team is typically composed of the product owner, the Scrum Master, and the development team. The product owner is responsible for defining the goals and requirements for the product, prioritizing the items in the product backlog, and ensuring that the product backlog is aligned with the business objectives. The Scrum Master is responsible for facilitating the Scrum process and ensuring that the team is following the Agile principles. The development team is responsible for completing the work items in the product backlog and delivering value to the stakeholders.

The product backlog is a dynamic list of work items that is continually updated and refined throughout the project. It is a critical element of the Scrum framework as it helps the team to maintain a clear and shared understanding of the goals and requirements for the project. The product backlog serves as the single source of truth for the team, and it is used to make informed decisions about what work needs to be completed and in what order. The Scrum backlog team is responsible for ensuring that the product backlog is up to date, well-organized, and reflective of the current needs and priorities of the project.

One of the main responsibilities of the Scrum backlog team is to prioritize the items in the product backlog. The team uses a variety of techniques to determine the priority of the work items, such as user stories, user feedback, market trends, and technical considerations. The team considers the relative importance of each work item and its impact on the overall project goals when determining the priority. The product backlog is continually updated and refined throughout the project, and the team uses the information gathered from the project to adjust the priorities as needed.

The Scrum backlog team also plays a key role in ensuring that the product backlog is well-organized. The team uses techniques such as user stories, acceptance criteria, and definition of done to ensure that the work items in the product backlog are well defined and understood by the team. The team also uses techniques such as story mapping and backlog refinement to ensure that the work items are logically grouped and organized in a way that makes sense for the team and the stakeholders. By maintaining a well-organized product backlog, the team can ensure that the work items are completed efficiently and effectively, and that the end-users receive a valuable product or service.

Another important responsibility of the Scrum backlog team is to ensure that the product backlog is reflective of the current needs and priorities of the project. The team works closely with the stakeholders to gather feedback and input on the product backlog, and uses this information to adjust the priorities as needed. The team also uses techniques such as sprint retrospectives to gather feedback from the development team on the work items in the product backlog, and to identify any areas that need improvement. By being responsive to the changing needs and priorities of the project, the Scrum backlog team helps to ensure that the product backlog remains relevant and aligned with the business objectives.