Scrum in a Non-Software Environment The main part of the session comprised a workshop discussion about using Scrum in a nonsoftware environment. One of our group has just completed their first sprint (4 week iteration) and we started by understanding a little about the business.

1. Agile: MK December 2012
Journal
December 2012
ISSUE 01
A special interest group for
professionals from the Milton
Keynes area who are interested in
learning, sharing and encouraging
the use of agile methodologies such
as Scrum, Extreme Programming &
Lean Thinking.
Agile:
“The State of the Art”
Guest Speaker: Ian Shimmings
Tuesday 15th January 2013
6pm – 8pm
Sponsored by

2. Agile: MK Journal
Welcome to the first issue of the Agile:
MK Journal.
I’ve been working with Agile methods for a
decade, and remain extremely passionate
and motivated because I get to see how it
improves the working lives of software
Steve Garnett development teams, and how that in turn
Founder Agile:MK
dramatically improves company performance.
We’ve set up an Agile User Group in Milton
Keynes called Agile:MK, and each month we’ll
be publishing real-world experiences of agile
adoption as discussed at these sessions. This
first edition covers the November meeting
where we discussed the use of Scrum in a
non-software environment.
To register your interest, If you’d like to join the group so you can
please join the attend the sessions, and be involved in the
LinkedIn Group at
http://tinyurl.com/ discussions face to face, to learn or share
agile-mk-liug your experiences, please join us on LinkedIn.
Agile:
“The State of the Art”
Guest Speaker: Ian Shimmings
Tuesday 15th January 2013
6pm – 8pm
Profile Guest Speaker:
Jurys Inn Hotel, Midsummer Ian Shimmings
Boulevard, Milton Keynes, MK9 2HP A software developer, solution
architect and team leader with
Agenda more than 20 years’ experience
• Introduction in all aspects of enterprise agile
• Deep Dive: The State of the Art projects working with major
• Guest Speaker – Ian Shimmings clients such as Milliman, Canon,
• Open Discussion BskyB, Man Investments, Russell
• Next Meeting Date Reynolds, John Charcol, Tesco
• AOB and drinks and Boots.
• Buffet, Tea & Coffee provided

3. December 2012
November Meeting Summary
Thanks again to everyone who attended the first Agile: MK meeting
last month. All the feedback received has been positive, and the intent
of this bulletin is to ensure the wider group gain some insight into the
discussions that took place.
Item 1: Why are we here? Review v Retrospective
We kicked off the session with a The discussion turned to the
small exercise to identify what we topic of end of sprint activities
believed a valuable user group and we talked about both the
would look like i.e. what is worth Sprint Review and Sprint
dragging yourself along to on a Retrospective. This is sometimes
cold winter’s evening! The group a misunderstood or confused
wants to network locally, share part of Scrum. At the end of an
experiences and learning, iteration or sprint, the team goes
encourage the adoption of agile through two specific processes:
in Milton Keynes, and drink free
beer… and be sponsored to do this! 1. The team presents its outputs
for the time period i.e. in this
Discussion backlog example, the team should
Item 2: Discussion Backlog
present its strategy for the
During the initial exercise a large client. This should be presented
number of discussion topics were to the business owner or
identified, these were prioritised to customer of the product.
provide an on-going agenda for The purpose is to ensure
the user group. From this we were that throughout the project
able to identify as more and more sprints are
completed, the business
Item 3: Scrum in a understands what is being
built and can feedback on
Non-Software Environment
both its quality and alignment
The main part of the session to business needs. The intent
comprised a workshop discussion is to ensure that the end
about using Scrum in a non- result of the project is closely
software environment. One of aligned to business needs.
our group has just completed
their first sprint (4 week iteration) 2. The team retrospects… The
and we started by understanding team asks itself ‘what did we
a little about the business. do well in the last 4 weeks?”
“what went poorly or needs
Mindmap of improvement?” and finally
Mindmap of
“what are we going to do
Non-Software Environment Non-Software Environment
differently in the next sprint?”
A general discussion brought
out the fact that the business’
primary functions are stakeholder
management, event management,
workshop facilitation, fund-raising,
marketing and communications
on behalf of non-for-profit
organisations across the UK.
Retrospective Output

4. Agile: MK Journal
These two activities are for this project the deliverable
fundamental to the successful of a Strategy would probably
adoption of Scrum and represent include acceptance criteria
the key objectives of firstly such as governance strategy,
ensuring a deliverable meets the fund-raising strategy and
customer’s needs, and secondly communications strategy as
ensuring a team continuously part of the overall delivery.
improves its capabilities.
Other criteria could include
Definition of Done being written in English,
available for download, in pdf
& Acceptance Criteria and PowerPoint formats.
One clear area to consider when
adopting Scrum in non-software
environments is quality. Operational Scrum Board
environments generally produce The final part of the session
lots of different deliverables as turned to a more practical way
part of meeting its customer of helping the team achieve its
needs. Rather than increments of goals within a sprint – the Scrum
software, this project is delivering Board. The group discussed the
documentation, marketing artefacts, implementation of scrum boards,
events, workshops and is raising how they differ from Kanban
Scrum Board capital. How will the team ensure boards, and some of the lean
that each of their deliverables is of principles behind boards such
the required quality? as maintaining low levels of
work-in-progress (WIP).
The discussion group started to
articulate the concept of ‘Definition The Scrum board is typically a
of Done’. For any delivered feature white board displaying all the
or artefact, the team needs to ask teams’ deliverables and associated
itself “How well has the feature tasks. This makes the team’s
been completed?” “To what level activities transparent to everyone
of quality?” in the room and this transparency
can have a significant impact on
The essential part of a Definition the team and management.
of Done is that it is created by
the team. Typically, the Definition There are many forms of scrum
of Done consists of a list of board, and two typical
standards and agreements that the implementations highlighted
team agrees to adhere to for each were [To Do – In Progress –
of its deliverables. Team members Done] and [To Do – Analysis –
should be transparent about these Development – Test – Done].
criteria and effective teams are We further discussed the relative
able to challenge each other maturity of teams adopting
when these criteria are broken. different styles, as well as queue
identification and bottlenecks,
So for the project at hand, the and observed that more mature
question for the team is “what does teams typically need fewer steps
a high quality strategy consist of? across the board.
In contrast, acceptance criteria is a
term used to articulate the needs
of the customer i.e. what should
the deliverable do, what pieces of
the deliverable does the customer
assign value to and will therefore,
pay for? The group outlined
that acceptance criteria are the
‘things the customer wants’. So

5. Agile: MK Bookshop December 2012
Agile Software Development with Scrum
by Ken Schwaber & Mike Beedle
This is the first agile book I ever read back in 2003. Reading this book
led to the first ever Certified Scrum Master course in the UK, the
creation of a £12m Agile Consulting practice and changed the shape
of many people’s lives.
For anyone new to agile and Scrum and wanting to get a basic
understanding of the premis and principles of agile then this is a solid
start. It is an easy to understand introduction to agile and Scrum by
the co-founder of Scrum - Ken Schwaber.
Agile is an umbrella covering a vast array of values, principles, practices,
and processes. For many, the core methods that help to define Agile are
Scrum, Extreme Programming and Lean Thinking. For me the starting
point was Scrum, below are some other key books to consider reading
when adopting agile and cover some of these other areas.
Lean Thinking Lean Software Development: Extreme Programming Explained
by James P. Womack & An Agile Toolkit by Kent Beck with Cynthia Andres
Daniel T. Jones by Mary Poppendieck & Tom Poppendieck
User Stories Applied Specification by Example Practices for Scaling Lean &
by Mike Cohn by Gojko Adzic Agile Development
by Craig Larman & Bas Vodde

6. Agile: MK Journal
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