The 3 S's of Agile

The 3 S's of Agile

While Sprinting the Scrum Teams might run into issues that a Scrum Master may not be able to control directly or identify easily. He or she may have to do some coaching in order to make sure those issues do not happen. The issue I am talking about is miniwaterfall.

Miniwaterfall is a tricky issue. I say that because it often disguises itself to look like a performance issue on the part of a Scrum Team member. A Scrum Team member who does not understand feature driven development and Agile principles will often fall prey to this issue. It may also happen if a Scrum Team Member does not understand what "Done" is, and why the PO has broken down work into User Stories, and why are they included in Sprints. If crossfunctionality is not practiced proactively it often leads to miniwaterfall. I have faced this tricky self disguising issue so many times that I have come up with a simple solution to tackling it.

We just have to remember the 3 S's of Agile.

Scope - As a general rule Know or determine the Done Criteria of a Sprint, User Story, Task before starting any tasks in a Sprint.

Sequence - Understand the sequence of User Stories and Tasks to help build internal timelines for User Stories and work by those timelines.

Sign off - Sign off (UAT with PO) early even when the feature is buggy, to clarify understanding on Scope and Sequence and any change in requirements.

I can't tell you how many times I have seen team members completely misunderstand a User Story's scope and build features which were not needed in an iteration. This also may happen if the sequence of work lined up in a Sprint is not completely understood. A simple UAT or PO sign off meeting can clarify scope and sequence and save tons of headaches for Developers and Designers!! If you know the 3 S's you will truly be working smart. So please please please, remember the 3 S's. Why work hard when you can work smart?