The Three Pillars of Empiricism (Scrum)

Paraphrased most valuable sentence that all should remember: "Scrum works not because of its rules, but because, as a predecessor, it adheres to the underlying values and principles of the Manifest for Agile Software Development."

Thank you for this post. Everyone reading this should also check out the of The House of Scrum from Gunther Verheyen - I recommend it because it highlights the fact that transparency is the foundation of the two pillars Inspect & Adapt. Without an appropriate transparency we might inspect & adapt the "wrong" things.

Is it me or are these scrum/agile terms simply new phrases/nouns for things we already know in engineering??? Seems more like a cult rather than anything all that useful.

Seeing how Scrum is over 22 years old, I wouldn't call them new phrases or nouns. Many have been applied to engineering and vise versa. Having things solidified in a framework, explained how they work together and interpreted is more important than the term alone.

While they are 22 years old in some circles I never once heard them throughout high school or college. I didn't start to see them demanded from employers until 5-8 years ago. Most people already do those things it's just changing nouns, which most will pick up on within a few weeks...but apparently employers use it as a barrier and reason to deny job hunters who haven't been in college the past 5-10 years.

i want to take the scrum master certification. what are recommended readings

1. Make you current understanding transparent:
https://www.scrum.org/index...

2. Inspect what you understand and what you do not understand

3. Adapt. Exploit what you do understand and remove what you do not understand

Repeat

Hi Guys,

Could anyone please answer this below?
"What is the Scrum master's daily routine starts from morning till end of working time, describe the full day with time schedules and in sequence?"

Pre requisite - 6 yrs exp scrum mater and partially matured team.

Regards,
Nepolion Nandy.

Small correction

"Scrum works not because it has three roles, five events, and three artifacts but because it ..."

It has 4 events, as the guide states that the Backlog refinement is not an event, but more of an ongoing process.

Thank you for the post.
I'd like to add that; I think one of the most important result of Agile principles and its 3 pillars is motivated team members. We are periodically measuring team happiness metric and teams are much more happier about their code quality, close relationships with customers, the feedbacks, self-organization and continuous improvement areas.
Motivated team members results in better transparency, adaptation and inspection in organizations.

The Sprint itself is also an event, so there are 5 Scrum events - the Sprint, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review & Retrospective. And indeed refinement is an ongoing process, not an official event.

Did what all others have suggested but also got Scrum Narrative and PSM Exam Guide by Mohammed Musthafa Soukath Ali which really helped. I passed the first attempt but most important is to use what you study and understand concepts not just answers.

So true! Alas the entire Scrum/Agile theory/books expect team members somehow to be motivated by nature, happy, people who feel really bad they couldn't do more work for the company and always willing to work more including weekends. (communist Russia or China???).

While Agile mentions 1 day or more for relaxation after the sprint, Scrum goes from iteration to iteration with zero-zero break.

Being 20 years in IT, I have seen so many teams, and diff companies... this is what I have noticed in all of them:

Once scrum/agile is introduced, all developers want to be managers. As long H1bs continues to flow in, Agile teams have the Green Card as motivation...

Another flaw I see day-to-day activities with scrum, due to not recognizing titles within the team it's f. impossible to ask anyone to check/do anything if it is 1" above their work, e.g "clean pdb files", or "where is your DoD for your task.." or ask a tester "why no fortify for this sprint?"....

Their reply is: "You can figure out yourself, not in my board" If anyone tries to bring it in retrospective or daily scrum meetings for any improvement, fractions go personal while company's management sits back and watch theater how people ruin their lives fueled by humans vices... (oh agile thrives on it)

If cheap labor (h1b) is limited, corporations will increase salaries and increase the productivity in anyway they can (agile/scrum/xp).... and $$$ is the main motivation.

PSM1, PSPO1

Also from definition, scrum does not have a fixed number of artifacts.

By definition: "Scrum’s artifacts represent work or value to provide transparency and opportunities for
inspection and adaptation."

1. Product backlog
2. Sprint backlog
3. Increment

are the main artifacts.

Rightfully, MP recognizes 6, adding three more:

4. Definition of “Done”
5. Monitoring Progress towards a Goal
6. Monitoring Sprint Progress

Scrum and Agile provide management with a fresh-sort-of approach to product development and potentially-gain better validated solutions thanks to the customer checks, but there are plenty of flaws which we need to accommodate in order to make a sensible end-to-end development:-

1: No tester role. Really?! So you want to make the developers, the creators, into the destroyers... yeah, sure. Dream on.
2: Cross functional roles included in the Development team? So, we have everybody we need in Development to avoid help from 'outside'? So, a body from Procurement, one from legal, one from HR, one from Audit etc..... and we need to limit to 9 people?
3: Respect, Openness and Trust? Have these people worked in the real world? This is like the 10 commandments.... Sorry, everybody sins, which starts with politics and ends with defensive emails sapping the who ethos....
4: Definition of Done - created by the Development team? Really? That with no Quality Manager role in scrum is a recipe for mess. Developers don't even know what the company needs them to provide. A Quality Manager would be able to guide them to Development Organisation standards including evidence of 'done' with a rational and evidence of what was done and why he/she thinks it's good.
5: Timebox/Sprint length always 2 weeks regardless of the needs of the environment e.g. SAFe requiring multiple scrum team output integration test time including bug fixing....

The solutions require experienced pragmatic people backed up with a Quality Manager to prepare them for the dreaded external/internal audits.
Jeff is correct with his observation that these new approaches/frameworks and standards for this, that and others are just being used by hirers to select the younger-but-experienced over older-but-super-experience BSc Computing Science bods.

But whatever new approaches to development we have and get, the bottom line is the right people need to be in power. An engineering person in command, and things tend to go well. Put sales/marketing in command, hmm... time to leave...

@mattkipper:disqus , It's called "integrity". Perhaps the teams you worked with had poor ethics, that doesn't mean all teams or people do.

awesome share

What is the difference between 5. and 6. Is it like release burndow and sprint burndown. You might need the 7. Definition of "Ready" too which should not be mandatory, but it should be recognized that without it, we may have to struggle to continuously improve.

I see what are you saying.... By definition, artifact represents work or value, regardless related to a sprint goal or not. Sprint includes more than a goal, e.g. building a CD/CI model which is a part of 6 months road map represents an artifact, even though may not be related to the sprint goal.

"Monitoring" in itself the way I see it, it should NOT be an artifact. The progress towards the sprint (or goal), only if its outcome provides a value (as a failure or as a success), then it is an artifact and the product owner should accept it.

You are right, it's a cult! I have been doing agile for last 15 years. No two scrum masters have the same understanding... and all go with the same cult excuse: "The others are not doing it right, but I will do the right scrum..."

Management wants it, it gives them a sense of security and control, yet they can't explain why they can't get more sales....

I got the certifications, 4 of them smoothly from scrum.org.

The only good thing about scrum certifications is that now scrum master can't B.S. too much, at least not in my face.... however, no one is willing to sacrifice the paycheck or the career fighting for the "honor of agile" so the B.S. is floating in our faces, daily, masquerading as SAFe

PSP I, PSD I, PSPO I, PSP I

"Timebox/Sprint length always 2 weeks regardless of the needs of the environment e.g. SAFe "

Yeah, they are becoming so ridiculous, Sprint goals are becoming adding a button and an event handler with exceptions....

All do know that it not the scrum which is working, it is the debt that force us to work - that is indeed what really is working. As such, we swallow everything given to us deep in our throat and there is nothing that we can do about it.

At that moment the project manager gets in the scrum meetings , monitoring charts, that turns all into a survival political game!

Everyone becomes pragmatic programmer, cut where can be possible cut, finish the deadline, get paycheck today, no one knows what tomorrow brings.

Sounds like cheap Chinese toys? That's the philosophy which those toys are build too!

Make sure you don't think out of the box
1 -2 -3; 1 -2 -3; 1 -2 -3... Agile!

Welcome to the agile software development philosophy. Please take time to research further as you have highlighted many of the common misunderstandings that newcomers have to the paradigm. It also appears that you have mistaken several common practices or loosely Scrum-based approaches such as S_Fe. (SAFe is traditional and not agile in nature.)

1. Developer is a term used for each individual on the Development Team; it is not a job title from the HR group. There may be technical writers, artists, quality assurance specialists, customers, etc.

2. See above, however, only the roles that are necessary to produce the product Increment are a part of the Development Team. HR, marketing, sales, accounting, etc are a part of the supporting organization.

3. Many organizations, not limited to professional ones i.e. families and friend groups, are full of those who do not uphold good values. Adhering to the values in The Scrum Guide is a must. Organizations and individuals who cannot need to be addressed or move away from the paradigm.

4. See the first. Teams and products are stronger when sharing the expectation for quality. For example, software engineers are encouraged to use Test Driven Design/Development (TDD), collaborate on automated testing approaches and maintenance, etc.

5. This is definitely confusing some specific methodoly directives with the framework of Scrum. Scrum requires no more than one-month Sprints. One week, eight days, three weeks, twenty nine days, etc. are all acceptable within the Scrum framework.

If you believe in the traditional, top-down, boss and workers, command-and-control paradigm then the Scrum framework and the agile product development philosophy may not be for you. It is a significant shift in mentality.

The Scrum Guide. That's all that should be needed. Supplemental materials must come from the authors of the definition. Cohn, Cuttler, and many others promote what is essentially rebranding of traditional approaches or falsely promote specific practices as requirements of the Scrum framework. https://scrumguides.org/

This is a crap question. There is no set schedule. The role of the Scrum Master is defined in The Scrum Guide ( https://scrumguides.org/ ) and, as with the rest of the framework, is not schedule driven. Cognitive and creative processes are often approached using schedule-driven paradigms primarily developed in manufacturing. There was a time when risk-based was the new paradigm and it is still useful in some areas. The creation of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development ( http://agilemanifesto.org/ ) was built upon the experimental processes of several who were intent on improving the multitude of failures of product development due to the traditional paradigms.

Not at all, but that is how they are commonly applied. http://agilemanifesto.org/

One of the key element to success for Agile projects is communications, especially when you have a multi-cultural multi-skilled team. It applies to all levels of the project, and is fundamental to achieve success.

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Hello,
I want to take up certification PSP I and II, could you share what all i need study/prepare please

Appreciate your guidance

thanks

Sorry for the late reply, I just noticed it that. There is no secret really, I just took the certifications in this logical order PSM1, PSD, PSPO I and the last one from Scrum was PSP. (now I added SAFe) Unfortunately there is no many PSP preparation tests (if any), but recently some may be available at Udemy.com. All I had to do is to read the materials listed on Scrum.org suggerstions, they are there for a reason. If you are going for PSP II, I am not in that position to help, I'm not that good, but If I had to go for it, I would read whatever scrum.org suggests and be active on-line forums for a month or so. Good luck.

Hello,
You say "Inspection in this context is not an inspection by an inspector or an auditor".
But Scrum Guide says "Inspections are most beneficial when diligently performed by skilled inspectors at the point of work".
As I'm preparing for PSM1 assessment I would like to know which assertion to follow ?
Regards,
Alex

Concise and great. Let me try to write summary.
Empiricism or objective view point stands on the pillars of transparency, inspection and adoptation. Agile encourages to share desirable and undesirable performance, this leads to "transparency" resulting in timely "inspection" (evaluation) and change (adoptation).

Did you know about the history of telescope ?

I just have to say that I've read so many of your comments on different posts, and you are incredible. I've learned more from reading your in-depth and detailed comments for the past ten minutes than I have reading through these posts. Thank you for your answers and explanations.

Thank you for the kind words! I am glad that my contributions have been helpful.

Nice article

thanks for sharing us with great information

Exactly right! That is the key so many shops (and so many consultants) completely overlook.

I recommend, keep taking open tests - there are several. do not rely just on scrum.org do lot more.

Very simple but clear explanation of how the three pillars of Empiricism operate.I strongly believe Transparency,Inspection and Adaptation are so closely interwoven that once any of the three is removed or undermined,the whole process will collapse like a pack of cards.

Good explanation. Simple but to the point. Thanks for posting it.

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Todos os eventos do scrum , criam a possibilidade de manter os 3 princípios dentro de um ambiente empírico

Muito bom.

Do we really inspect at the end of the sprint....?