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What is Backlog Grooming and How Much Time Should I Invest?

What is Backlog Grooming? - Larry Apke
After my experience working with dozens of scrum teams in transitioning to Agile, I am thoroughly convinced that a great deal of Agile success is wrapped up in the two things that most lower functioning teams do not do well – Release Planning and Backlog Grooming.

So what is backlog grooming?

Personally, I do not like the words “backlog grooming.” To me it is merely an extension of sprint planning so forgive me when I refer to this as extended sprint planning. I think one of the things that early Scrum made a mistake on is that it expected sprint planning to happen the very first day of the sprint in what for many are LONG planning sessions. In fact, I would not be surprised if the term backlog grooming was coined so that early Agilites could save face!

In other words, let’s call this something other than sprint planning so we don’t have to admit we were not 100% right on what sprint planning should be. (Given the religious nature of Agile and Scrum I fully expect to be excommunicated and eviscerated so please feel free to comment).

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Thoughts on Leadership

When in doubt, google. I found the definition for leadership from about.com – “Leadership, a critical management skill, is the ability to motivate a group of people toward a common goal.”

I would guess that this definition is innocuous enough, but I just can’t seem to completely agree. I know that a lot of people think that leaders are great motivators. While this may be one of the by-products of leadership, I have always maintained that great leaders do not motivate others but create the environment whereby self-motivated people will be able to flourish.

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Trust and Agile

I had the wonderful opportunity to have a panel discussion recently regarding Agile. In my warped world, there is no greater pleasure than getting grilled on how Agile can be implemented in the real world. As such conversations are wont to do, a consistent theme emerged. In this particular conversation it was all about Trust.

If someone asked me to pick one word that could be used to describe a low functional Agile team versus a high functioning team, there are two words that come to mind – Discipline and Trust. Of these trust is probably the most important in that it can be hard to acquire, difficult to keep and easy to lose. As a scrum master, my team has to trust that I have their best interests in mind at all times, that the metrics I compile will never be used to punish them. They need to trust each other to be able to commit to a body of work for any particular sprint, etc.

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Can We Call it Something Other Than Scrum Master?

I have become what I cannot stand a Scrum Master. Not that I believe that what I do for a living is not valuable. It is highly valuable as I spend my whole entire existence in support of creating and delivering high-quality, high-impact software on a regular basis. In fact, my mantra for my scrum teams is “We provide business value.” There is nothing better in my mind than delivering solid business value. It is worth the money they spend on me (and much more). The problem I have with my job is the title Scrum Master. It is the second most pretentious job title I have ever had the pleasure of knowing (that of web master predates it so wins the pretentious gold medal by a nose). Every time I tell someone what I do for a living, I die a little inside.

What is it about software development that leads us to such titles? And the job search terms. Why is it that only cults and IT would use the term guru all the time? Do we have a problem with self-importance? I wasn’t always titled as such – in the past I have been Software Development Manager, Director of Software Development, etc. even while I ran multiple scrum teams. It hasn’t been too long that I finally became a full time Scrum Master. I like the job. I just want a new title.

Here are some suggestions for replacing the title Scrum Master: Software Delivery Manager, Software Delivery Facilitator, Software Process Technician, Software Delivery Practitioner, Software Process Manager, Software Process Improvement Manager. Of course, we can always go completely the other way: Software God, Doctor of Software Goodness, Master of Software Universe, Super Software Man.

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It’s the Discipline Stupid

I spend a good deal of time trying to make myself a better Scrum Master (see blog). This means reading lots of books, a great deal of googling and reading many blogs. Recently I ran into one called Coding Horror by Jeff Atwood.

He had a great entry about Discipline in software development.

I had the same conversation with a colleague of mine years ago when I was first introduced to Agile development. My argument went something like this. Left to their own devices, software developers are a fairly undisciplined lot. Every methodology of the last 40 years or so are merely a response from management to attempt to bring some order and discipline to software developers (and by extension software development). I joked with him that I should come up with the next fad, called disciplined development, throw a few buzzwords and ceremonies into it and then I could make a killing as a consultant. I mean isn’t that what every methodology fad has been so far?

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Agile as Religion

For the sake of full disclosure I am not a big fan of organized religion. I truly believe that each and every individual has their own needs when it comes to “spiritual” matters and there are many ways to achieve the basic human need to feel connected to our fellow humans and the universe as a whole. Perhaps this is what has me cautious about the state of Agile today in that it taking the appearances of a religion or cult. Like many religions the actual meaning behind the religion are lost and all that remains is a slavish flowing of fundamentalist dogma (words taken as literal truth) and ceremony. Agile says that we need to do this so we had better do this before someone calls us out as heathens.

One of the really irritating thing for me is when Agilistas talk wistfully about their brush with greatness as in I was at the Agile conference and actually touched the cloak of (enter your favorite Agile deity here). Hey, I can respect these guys, but they are like all humans fallible. They may have put forth some great ideas, but quoting a source by authority alone is a weak argument. To be an effective argument one must not only quote a chosen one, but also give evidence as to why this particular bit of wisdom is applicable to whatever context one finds oneself.

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