Agile anti-patterns real-life dysfunctions and what to do about them?

2. Raj Kasturi,
• 25+ years of IT experience with eight plus years of enterprise level Agile Experience
• Adjunct faculty at Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, USA
• 18+ years of teaching experience on Scrum, Project Management
and various technology courses
• Started my career as a programmer; worked as App. Dev. Manager
• Agile experience as an Agile Coach, Scrum Trainer, Scrum Master
• Leading and helping large-‐scale Agile project transitions
• Speaker, volunteer at agile conferences, user groups
• Group Leader – Agile World, User Group, Scrum Alliance
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MBA, CSP, CSM, CSPO, PMP
Speaker Introduction
http://agilekingdom.com/
My Website/Blog:
@AgileRaj
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajkasturi/

3. What is an anti-pattern?
RARE, a mnemonic!
Scrum has…..
Anti-patterns
Fixing dysfunctions
Summary
Q & A

4. What is an anti-pattern?
Heard the phrase Scrum smells?.....
• An anti pattern is a frequently
used, but largely ineffective
solution to a problem. The term
was originally used to refer to a
pattern gone wrong.
• As Scrum practitioners, we all
know that Scrum has events,
artifacts, roles and rules.
Or dysfunction?
• If the core principles,
foundation ideas or the agile
manifesto is 'tweaked' hoping
they would provide benefits
because teams are not seeing
immediate results, this may
result in an anti pattern.
• This in turn may become an
ineffective solution to a
problem.

5. RARE- a mnemonic

6. Scrum has…
Scrum has three roles
The Development Team
The Product Owner
The ScrumMaster
Scrum has four events
Sprint Planning Meeting
The Daily Scrum
Sprint Review
Sprint Retrospective
Scrum has three artifacts
 Product Backlog
 Sprint Backlog
 Product Increment
And an activity:
Back-log refinement
 Rules
 Artifacts
 Roles and
 Events or meetings

7. Sprint anti-patterns
 Not always the same length
 Changing dates
 Break between Sprints
 Sprint Zero
 Hardening Sprint
 How do we fix it?

8. Sprint Planning anti-patterns
 Not checking team member availability
 No capacity planning
 Not validating if the product backlog is refined
 Too detailed/too little of planning
 Spending too much time on tasks, estimation
 Not coming up with a Sprint goal at the end
 Product Owner dictating the ‘how’
 Over committing
 How do we fix it?

9. Daily Scrum anti-patterns
 Going over the time-box
 Non-scrum team talking
 Team members missing
 Team members late
 Status update to the
ScrumMaster
 How do we fix it?

10. Sprint Review anti-patterns
• Key stakeholders missing
• Doing multiple review meetings
• Extensive power point
presentations/preparation
• No credit to the development
team
• Delayed acceptance of user stories
• Making big changes soon after
receiving feedback
 How do we fix it?

11. Sprint Retrospective anti-patterns
• Just a formality – finish quickly
• Repetitive discussions
• Recording the retrospective
• continuous complaining session
• Not reviewing the previously
identified improvement items
• Not coming up with any
improvement ideas
• Not creating a safe environment for
team to express freely
• Same folks contributing to the retro
 How do we fix it?

12. ScrumMaster anti-patterns
• Directing and assigning work to the
development team
• Not protecting the team
• Handling multiple teams or roles
• Not paying attention to impediments
• Not serving the Team or the
organization
• Not helping the Product Owner with
product backlog refinement
(techniques)
 How do we fix it?

13. The Development Team anti-patterns
• Not asking the right questions of
the PO
• Not able to say ‘No’ (?)
• Pushing technical debt to future
sprints
• Not following the definition of done
• No respect for other team members
• Don’t understand the Scrum frame-
work
• Not helping others when done
• Spending less than or more than
10% of capacity on product
refinement
 How do we fix it?

14. Product Owner anti-patterns
• No or very limited availability
• Not sharing the product vision
with the Scrum Team
• Skipping the Scrum meetings
• Telling the team how to create a
product increment
 How do we fix it?

15. Product Backlog anti-patterns
• Entire backlog refined, ordered
• PBIs Sliced horizontally instead
of vertically
• Creating water-fall like user
stories – design, code, test, etc.
• No acceptance criteria defined
• Standard format As a User…not
followed, no business value
defined
 How do we fix it?

16. 16

17. Attributions
• This presentation and deck derived from:
 Scrum Guide –www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v1/scrum-guide-us.pdf
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• https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/toward-a-catalog-of-scrum-smells
• http://scrummasterchecklist.org/pdf/ScrumMaster_Checklist_12_unbranded.pdf
• Scrum anti-patterns guide – Stephan Wolpers
• References, some ideas, content derived from: