Advanced Scrum Case Studies

You are a Scrum Master and you have a challenge: You have been hired to "fix" a poorly performing software development team. When you join the group you find that it is dominated by a very capable by a strong willed woman that the team calls "Bossy Bobbie". She makes every decision and assigns tasks to all of the other developers. She follows them up and takes over their tasks if they fall behind. No one is happy about the situation, but no one seems willing to do anything about it.

You are a Scrum Master and you have a challenge: You are coaching a new Product Owner doing release planning for the first time. There are three politically powerful stakeholders who each wan their project included as your team's highest priority. It is clear that due to the lack of resources it will be a miracle if even one of the enhancements can be delivered.

You have been hired by a company with big plans. They want to create a new family of products and have them ready for sale in just six months. They have just hired 75 recent graduate from ivy league colleges to do the work, and the company wants you to form them into five Scrum teams and manage them to meet the deadline. Dealing with 75 grass green developers is a tall order, but the company expects success. What should you do?

You are an Agile Coach and you have been retained by a small but successful start up company. They have achieved positive cash flow and are starting to grow. So far, so good! The investors are pressuring the company leadership to adopt more formal procedures. Specifically they would like the start up to submit a formal budget for the investors to approve. You have been asked to teach and coach the company leadership how budgeting works in an Agile context. What should you tell them?

You are a Scrum Master and you are joining an existing team. There is a problem, though. The Product Owner is unhappy. There is a high priority item on the Product Backlog that the developers are refusing to add to their Sprint. They say that Scrum gives them the right to choose the work they do, and they claim the so called "high priority" item is not very important at all.

You are on a Scrum Team with a problem. You need some changes to the data base behind the application you are creating, but the tables are controlled by another team, they are busy with their own priorities and do not want to help. What should you do? This case and the others in the series come from the real-world experiences of a group of Scrum professionals who meet regularly to discuss the Scrum Framework and how to apply it to actual situations they have encountered.

You are an Agile Coach and your client has asked you a question. He is an engineering manager and the company has just announced a "work from home" policy. Developers may now work from home instead of coming to the office. The Engineering Manager has asked you if there are any "Agile Metrics" he can use to make sure his developers stay busy and are not being lazy. He is investigating software to record when people log in and log out, and count their keystrokes in between. What should you tell him to do?

You are a Scrum Master and your team has a problem. Their work depends on another team to enhance the back end of the application but they are not being very helpful. Your team tells you that the other team's performance is an "impediment" and that you must go whip the other team into shape. What should you do?

You are an Agile Coach and you are being called in to fix a bad problem. Your client has entered into a fixed price contract with their client, but it looks like the project is going sour. Half of the time and money have been spent but only about 30 percent of the milestones have been reached. Management wants you to "do Agile" and fix the problem. What should you do? This case and the others in the series come from the real-world experiences of a group of Scrum professionals who meet regularly to discuss the Scrum Framework and how to apply it to actual situations they have encountered.

You are an Agile Coach and you are being called in to fix a problem with project ownership. There is a team of developers who look good on paper but who are not performing up to expectations. They do not seem to care very much about the work they are doing. You have been asked to figure out what is wrong and to fix it. What should you do?