Howard van Rooijen's Blog : Podcast

Scrum FAQ Podcast Transcript: available for download

howard.vanrooijen — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 09:09:00 GMT

After I released the Agile Software Development with Scrum Podcast Series I found a referral from a post by Bernie Thompson saying that he really enjoyed the podcasts but would like a community effort to transcribe them. I always intended the FAQ to be part of the “Scrum for Team System” (the final name for the Scrum plug-in) documentation but I knew the only feasible way for Ken to produce it would be for me to prepare a list of questions then sit down with him and just record his answers.

I spent some time last year transcribing the podcasts into for the Scrum for Team System documentation; over the Christmas period I converted it into a PDF document to make it available to everyone in a nice portable format. You can download the file below:

Scrum FAQ by Ken Schwaber

Agile Software Development with Scrum Podcast Series - Scrum FAQ Part 3

howard.vanrooijen — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 16:10:00 GMT

A few weeks ago I managed to steal a couple of hours of Ken Schwabers' time and recorded a series of 10 minute podcasts where Ken answers some of the more frequently asked questions about the Scrum Process. The FAQ will ship, in written form, as part of the documentation for "Agile Software Development with Scrum" for Team System. If you haven't listened to them already, Part 1 and Part 2 of the series are still available.

The questions Ken answers in Part 3 are listed below:

Why is everything in Scrum time-boxed?
Why does Scrum say nothing about engineering practices?
How do I measure the performance of the team?
How do I measure the performance of a team member?
What is the benefit of doing a Sprint Retrospective?
How to fix a bug in a Sprint?
How can you get buy-in for the use of Scrum?
What kind of reports do I supply to management?
Why would you cancel a Sprint?
Can scrum work without fulltime commitment from one or more of the stakeholders?
Do Scrum teams need to be co-located?
Doesn't Scrum mean we have to throw away the best IT practices we've developed over the last 20 years?
What's the cost of change? Will the introduction of Scrum cause more problems than it solves?
Is there a downside to changing the make up of a team after the Sprint has started?
How do you scale Scrum to larger projects?

Agile Software Development with Scrum Podcast Series - Scrum FAQ Part 2

howard.vanrooijen — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 10:09:00 GMT

A few weeks ago I managed to steal a couple of hours of Ken Schwabers' time and recorded a series of 10 minute podcasts where Ken answers some of the more frequently asked questions about the Scrum Process. The FAQ will ship, in written form, with the “Agile Software Development with Scrum” Visual Studio Team System plug-in which will be a free download on our Scrum micro-site www.scrum-master.com (you can find the press release here).

If you haven't listened to Part 1 of the Podcast series go to my original post for more information.

The questions Ken answers in Part 2 are listed below:

What is a Sprint?
What is a Product Backlog?
What is a Sprint Backlog?
Does Scrum need a Project Manager?
Does Scrum need a Project Plan?
Who attends the Daily Scrum?
How long is a Daily Scrum?
What are the Scrum Roles?
Who tells the Team what to do?
What does a Scrum Team look like?
Do I need very good developers for Scrum?
What does a Scrum Master do?
What does a Scrum Master do on a normal day?
Can the Scrum Master be a developer or an architect?
Can Scrum be useful for non-software projects?
Do I need to stick to a month time frame?

Agile Software Development with Scrum Podcast Series - Scrum FAQ Part 1

howard.vanrooijen — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 12:55:00 GMT

A few weeks ago I spent an afternoon trawling the Scrum Development Yahoo-Group and Google trying to collate a list of questions for the Scrum FAQ that will ship with the “Agile Software Development with Scrum” Visual Studio Team System plug-in that Colin Bird, Stuart Preston, Susie Kablean and I are currently working on. I came up with a list of 60 or so questions that seemed to appear time and again. Luckily for me Ken Schwaber was in London last week helping us to teach two Certified Scrum Master courses at Beaumont House in Old Windsor (Conchango now has over 60 Certified Scrum Masters).

I managed to steal him away for a day to work on more interactive documentation for the Team System plug-in (following on from the overview of Agile Software Development on our Scrum micro-site – www.scrum-master.com) and we also recorded a series of podcasts answering the FAQ list I had created. I’m going to release the podcasts over the next few weeks – each one is going to be bite sized – weighing in at 10 minutes in length and 7Mb in size and in MP3 format.

The questions answered in Part 1 are listed below:

What is Agile?
What is the Agile Manifesto?
What is the Agile Alliance?
What is the Scrum Alliance?
How do I become a Certified Scrum Master?
What is a Scrum Practitioner?
What is a Scrum Trainer?
Where do I find a Scrum Master?
What is Scrum?
Why should I be thinking about adopting Scrum?
How will Scrum affect my organisation?
What are the benefits of using Scrum?
How can I adopt Scrum?
Where can I read more about Scrum?
How do you deal with fixed-price projects?