Twelve jobs and three people
A help desk has twelve jobs on Monday morning. Three technicians start all twelve at once. By Friday, nothing is finished.
Two ways of working fix this in different ways. One works in short bursts. The other limits how much is started.
Key words
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Agile | a way of working in small steps, with feedback after each step |
| Scrum | an agile method that works in short bursts called sprints |
| Sprint | a short, fixed period of work, often two weeks |
| Product owner | the person who decides what is most important |
| Scrum master | the person who helps the team follow Scrum |
| Backlog | the list of work still to do |
| Kanban | an agile method that shows work on a board |
| Bottleneck | a step where work piles up and waits |
| WIP limit | the most cards allowed in a column at once |
| Capacity | how much work a team can do |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
By the end of this lesson
Note
I can describe how Scrum and Kanban organise work, and what a daily scrum, a bottleneck and a WIP limit are.
Starter
Have a go
Starter
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.
Scrum: roles and rules
Scrum has three roles. The Scrum Guide calls them accountabilities. The product owner says what matters most. The scrum master helps the team follow the rules and removes blockers. The developers do the work. In support, they are the technicians.
Scrum has fixed rules. Work is done in sprints. A sprint has a set length of one month or less, and a goal.
Events and artefacts
| Name | Kind | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Sprint planning | Event | The team picks work for the sprint |
| Daily scrum | Event | A 15 minute meeting to plan the next day of work. Many teams share what they did, what they will do and what blocks them |
| Sprint review | Event | The team shows the finished work |
| Retrospective | Event | The team talks about how to work better |
| Product backlog | Artefact | All the work wanted, in order of importance |
| Sprint backlog | Artefact | The work chosen for this sprint |
| Increment | Artefact | The finished, working result of the sprint |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
Check: Scrum
Have a go
Check: Scrum
4 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.