Scrum Repair Guide

A well-organized product backlog lets a team start strong at the beginning of each sprint. But it can become chaotic, costing the team valuable time. In this module, you’ll see how to:

• Keep the product backlog up-to-date so the team doesn’t waste time searching for key information
• Remove resistance from a product owner who is reluctant to allow technical work within a sprint 
• Increase the chance of delivering something potentially shippable  by choosing the right product backlog items 

Even if your team is reluctant to make estimates, this module will show you how to:

• Make developers feel safe about estimating (so they don’t try and sabotage results)
• Build the credibility of a team so that stakeholders listen when a team says something can't be done
• Communicate estimates so that stakeholders are happy and the team doesn’t feel pressured
• Use the ‘no partial credit rule’ to encourage the team to perform better

Many things can can derail even an experienced team during a sprint, but with the Scrum Repair guide, you can:  

• Know if a sprint that is too short (or too long) and how to fix it
• Understand the top 5 reasons teams under-deliver, and how to avoid this
• Make sure your team understands ‘potentially shippable’ so they don't think a sprint will fail when it can be saved
• Stop sprints becoming meaningless milestones with unfinished work left at the end 

Meetings are a common source of wasted time and team frustration. This module tackles this head on and shows you:

• Why the “2 hours per week of the sprint” advice isn’t always the right length for the sprint planning meeting.
• Why teams shouldn’t think of every task in the sprint planning meeting 
• How to use the sprint planning meeting to stop the worst habit of all: failing to deliver
• 3 ways to have a successful sprint review if you have functionality that you can’t demonstrate

There are ways to handle stakeholder requests diplomatically without sacrificing the morale of the team. In this module you'll dive into:

• How to use project success sliders to get a meaningful discussion about (true) stakeholder priorities.
• 3 great questions for stakeholders that give you flexibility on scope schedule and cost.
• A useulf illustration you can use to make stakeholders clear about what is flexible, and what is non-negotiable
• How to move from documentation to discussion, by proving which documents are truly necessary

Your team's ability to work together respectfully is a critical factor in its succes. This module shows you how to:

• Get team members to focus on group throughput rather than individual productivity
• Encourage team members to work outside their role (and understand when this won’t work)
• Have team members do smaller handoffs earlier, so that testing isn’t left until the last few days
• Support an overly busy product owner so that you can get their input when you need it

If Scrum isn't applied properly, it can negatively affect the team's culture. See how to prevent this and learn how to:

• Use 3 ways to work at a sustainable pace and eliminate burnout
• Understand exactly why separating sprints for testing and programming is a bad idea
• Quantify risk so that you can estimate it more accurately
• Choose 4 different ways to reward a team (and understand which incentive is the most damaging to motivation)