The core responsibility of Scrum teams is to deliver a "Done" increment every Sprint. This exercise is all about making transparent what this means, and what happens when teams are unable to do so.
How does this help your team?
With this exercise, you create transparency around the ability of your team to deliver completely "Done" software every Sprint. And if they can't, this exercise makes painfully clear how risky that really is. Based on the patterns that become apparent during the exercise, you can inspect with your team what that means. Can you do better? Where can you improve?
We also found this exercise to be hugely powerful to help teams grasp why "Done" increments are so essential. Without it, predictability suffers, and the risk increases. This exercise shows you why.
We created this exercise for the Professional Scrum Master II Class by Scrum.org and offer it here with their permission. The class is a great way to learn more about Scrum and why "Done" matters. If you haven't attended this class, make sure to do so!
What do you receive?
- 7 cards with workflow steps
- 1 green card with 'Done!'
- 1 red card with 'Not done!'
- 1 card with a description of the exercise
- 19 blue cards with activities
- 19 red cards with issues and problems that (can) emerge during a Sprint
- The large cards are 21x15 cm, and the activities are 15x10.7 cm.
We hope to liberate our planet from waste too, so our material is printed on 100% wood-free, recycled paper, and inked with ecological paint.
Also for virtual teams!
You can also use this with your virtual team. In addition to the physical deck, you also receive a free digital download with detailed instructions (11 pages) for how to run this exercise virtually. This also includes all the cards as separate images (Jpg), ready for upload in your collaboration tool of choice.
- Why Scrum requires completely "Done" software every Sprint;
- Check out our ongoing series of posts for Scrum Mythbusters.
- Read our whitepaper where we explain the Scrum framework, and its principles and values, in our own words.