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On today’s episode of YOUR DAILY SCRUM: When does UAT happen in Scrum? Today's question is all about User Acceptance Testing (UAT). UAT is an anti-pattern in Scrum. There...we said it. It's just a bad idea. You're creating a phase gate that makes your agile practices look a lot like a waterfall. All of this and more are discussed in today's episode of Your Daily Scrum with Todd Miller and Ryan Ripley. {"preview_thumbnail":"/s3/files/styles/video_embed_wysiwyg_preview/public/video_thumbnails/FnHAlRde0fk.jpg?itok=EEWVEv5V","video_url":"https://youtu.be/FnHAlRde0fk","settings":{"responsive":1,"width":"854","height":"480","autoplay":0},"settings_summary":["Embedded Video (Responsive)."]} Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller are the author of Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems. They are the co-founders of Agile for Humans, the premiere Scrum and Kanban training organization. Join Ryan and Todd in a Professional Scrum training course: https://www.scrum.org/agile-humans

In this video, I'm talking about what to look out for when talking about customer needs and how to help your team truly understand their customers.

Join me and explore the reasons and the consequences of this Sprint anti-pattern in 109 seconds.

Contrary to popular belief, the Scrum Master success principles are tangible, when we guide the analysis with an outside perspective. Read on and discover four Scrum Master success principles: From when not to use Scrum to product quality to supporting the Product Owner to putting self-management at the center. 🗞 Shall I notify you about articles like this one? Awesome! You can sign up here for the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter and join 31,000-plus other subscribers. 🎓 Join Stefan in one of his upcoming Professional Scrum training classes! Join more than 195 peers from May 27-29, 2021, for the Virtual Agile Camp Berlin 2021, a live virtual Barcamp using open space technology principles and practices. Meeting Stakeholder Expectations No matter how diverse the stakeholders of your Scrum Team are, they are all united in one expectation: Your Scrum team delivers—with the precision of a Swiss clockwork—a Done, potentially releasable, valuable Product Increment every single Sprint. In my experience, four first principles support Scrum Masters to help their teams deliver on this expectation: Choose Scrum for the Right Purpose Choosing the appropriate application area for Scrum is essential. Referring to the Stacey Matrix, applying Scrum to the areas “Chaos” and “Simple” is a waste. Scrum is best used in the “Complex” area. Here, empirical process control thrives, applying transparency, inspection, and adaptation to iteratively, incrementally developing valuable product Increments, thus mitigating risk. Strive for High Product Quality From day one, keep technical debt small and work continuously on high product quality, reflected in the Scrum Team’s Definition of Done. Achieving business agility requires dedication to product quality and excellence at the technical level. (Learn more: Technical Debt & Scrum: Who Is Responsible? Create and Maintain an Actionable Product Backlog Garbage in, garbage out: No matter how your Scrum Team is everything else, a sub-standard Product Backlog will diminish all other team achievements. Hence, it would be best to support the Product Owner and the Developers to maintain a permanently “actionable” Product Backlog. By “actionable,” I am referring to a refinement level of the Product Backlog that would allow a Scrum Team to run a meaningful Sprint Planning at a moment’s notice. (Learn more: 28 Product Backlog and Refinement Anti-Patterns.) Embrace Self-Management and Take It to the Scrum Team Restrain from solving problems that your teammates can solve themselves. I know it feels good to be helpful; however, it is not your job as a Scrum Master to become the team’s helping hand in all matters. Instead, make self-management our number one priority and ensure that everyone lives Scrum Values. Be a servant-leader at heart and, therefore, a good role model for the Scrum team. All sketches are taken from a previous Professional Scrum Master class; check out my upcoming training classes here. Conclusion It helps while identifying the success principles of a Scrum Master to take an outside perspective. For example, if I had to summarize everyone’s expectations regarding the work of a Scrum Team in a single sentence, it would be this one: The Scrum team delivers—with the precision of a Swiss clockwork—a Done, potentially releasable, valuable Product Increment every single Sprint. What principles are guiding your work as a Scrum Master? Please share with us your lessons learned. ✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn about Four Scrum Master Success Principles: Join the 9,000-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Team I invite you to join the “Hands-on Agile” Slack team and enjoy the benefits of a fast-growing, vibrant community of agile practitioners from around the world. If you like to join now all you have to do now is provide your credentials via this Google form, and I will sign you up. By the way, it’s free. 📖 Scrum Master Success Principles — Related Posts Technical Debt & Scrum: Who Is Responsible? 28 Product Backlog and Refinement Anti-Patterns Scrum First Principles — How to Elon Musk the Scrum Guide Download the Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide for free