Let's Quiz Agile
Welcome to the Agile Project Management quiz. Here you can Your Scrum skills and project management knowledge using real project examples test.
Imagine you are in the role of a coach and have to give the team feedback on their work process, their reporting or their requirements management - without any in-depth understanding of the project content.
We offer you a four-part quiz series that using abstract examples from our projects and coaching workshops shows where the key challenges in agile project management and how to deal with them in a targeted manner. This is because there is usually no clear, universally valid model solution, but rather different ways of dealing with such project situations.
It is based on project situations that we have experienced ourselves and for which we had to find a solution. And of course you will also find out how we dealt with the respective project situation.
In our quiz we look at Project situations from the following four areas:
- Sprint Planning
- Sprint backlog
- Reporting
- Sprint Review
The project situations described originate primarily from agile projects in which the Scrum project management model is used. or a variant adapted by the respective customer was used.
Scrum describes a iterative process for software developmentan iteration is referred to as a sprint. It starts with the Sprint Planningin which the work packages (user stories) to be implemented in this sprint are defined and planned. These user stories form the Sprint backlog.
As in every project, the Reporting a central element in project management; in Scrum, this is often done with the help of burndown charts. The conclusion of a sprint is the Sprint Reviewin which the team presents the results of the sprint to the product owner.
For many projects in an agile environment, we talk about hybrid projects, as they use agile and phase-oriented project management approaches unite. In general, the project situations described in the quiz do not apply exclusively to agile projects. Similar project situations can also occur in projects in which phase-oriented project management models such as the waterfall model or the V-model are used. Many topics also go beyond the respective process model and affect project management in general. This is because it is about correctly assessing situations and making decisions in project management.
Sprint planning - every beginning is difficult
The first quiz is about sprint planning: at the start of a sprint, we have to plan the work packages that we will implement in this sprint. These are described in the form of user stories in order to define the required functionalities from the user's perspective.
Sprint planning clarifies the question for a sprint, what to do and like it has to be done. The Product Owner is responsible for the "what", the Team for the "how". This is why sprint planning is divided into two parts. Only when the product owner has answered all the questions for the team will a user story be included in the sprint for implementation. If this is the case, the team plans how to implement the respective user story in the second part of sprint planning.
Scrum Cooking Workshop
The first project situation arose in a Scrum Cooking Workshop. In these workshops, the idea of Scrum taught in a playful way in an agile cooking project.
The specific project is about lunch in a premium canteen. The aim is to offer the customer and end user, in this case the canteen guest, the dishes that they have imagined. However, in addition to the guest, there are also other stakeholders whose requirements need to be taken into account, for example the canteen operator.
The Product Owner is responsible for the Prioritization and Specification of the requirements for the food that the team prepares. They must therefore collect the - sometimes less concrete - ideas of the stakeholders (canteen guests, canteen operators, etc.) and convert them into concrete, implementable work packages. One challenge here is that there can also be contradictory requirements that then have to be resolved.
The Scrum Master must ensure that the agile process is adhered to. This means, among other things, that they must ensure that scrum meetings such as sprint planning and dailies are carried out.
Of course, you could also start the project straight away without investing a lot of time in planning. But experience has shown that this takes its toll over the course of the project: in this particular project, for example, the team recognized dependencies between tasks far too late due to the unfinished planning. An oven dish was then served too late and quite "firm to the bite" due to the lack of an oven preheating phase. And if such situations occur in a - comparatively - simple cooking project, what does it look like in complex software projects?
Different dishes are cooked over the course of several sprints. As in any project, this can also unforeseen situations for example, the absence of a team member or unavailable technologies such as a missing mixer.
The specific case - Lunch in the premium canteen
Our lunch project in the Premium Canteen is all about following situationThe Scrum team consists of four chefs, a Scrum Master and a Product Owner. Two sprints, in which the Scrum team has prepared a starter and a main course, have already been completed. The goal for the third sprint is the dessert.
The Product Owner has two User stories for sprint planning.
| User Story 1 | "As a guest I would like to enjoy a raspberry and mascarpone layered cream with business partners from Italy in the new Premium Canteen. It should round off the Italian menu in a fitting way and the partners should feel at home." |
| User Story 2 | "As an operator of the new Premium Canteen, I want the details of the dish to be presented in an Italian ambience. My goal is to decide whether to include the dish in the canteen program." |
| Acceptance criteria are: |
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The result of the sprint planning can be found on the Taskboard:
Imagine a team member has to leave the team for a while due to an urgent conference call and you take their place.
Question 1: What questions do you ask in order to be able to start work as quickly as possible?
Question 2: Who do you clarify your questions with?
Question 3In your opinion, is the task board, as it is structured, suitable for the team to work in a self-organized way? Do you feel comfortable with the tasks? Why is this the case?
| Interested in the solution?
For this case, too, there is no the right solution. Please send us Your answers per Contact form or post a comment under this post, we will immediately send you the sample solution, i.e. our recommendations for dealing with the project situation, by mail. We look forward to your ideas! |
You can find more agile project management here
Here you will find parts 2, 3 and 4 of the project management series:
Part 2 of the PM Quiz - Sprint Backlog - Let the sprint begin!
Part 3 of the PM Quiz - Reporting - Is our project successful?
Part 4 of the PM Quiz - Sprint Review - What have we achieved?
