Merle Randlepp
Agile Coach
Merle Randlepp
Agile Coach
Scrum checklist for regular health checks
Here is a simple Scrum test that gives you an instant idea of how well your team is following the agile Scrum Framework. It is based on Henrik Kniberg’s popular Scrum checklist that is the best Scrum checklist I have used in my work.
Since most of my teams have been distributed teams and spread around the world, I developed the format a bit and based it on a Google Spreadsheet. This format has two good advantages:
- Remote team members can fill it simultaneously (eg during Retrospective Meeting)
- The progress of team development is monitorable. If you repeat the health check after a couple of sprints, the improved areas that have turned green will be immediately visible.
It takes 5-10 minutes to complete the test, after which it is beneficial to go through the red spots with the team and think about the value they may bring and how to develop them.
How to take a test?
1. Open read-only Google Spreadsheet Scrum checklist for regular health checks
2. Make a copy for yourself (you have to be signed in with your Google account):
Open File menu and choose
Make a copy
or
Download > Microsoft Excel (.xlsx)
or
Add to My Drive
3. Take the test!
Analysing results
Well, green is obviously good and red is an opportunity to improve 🙂
I suggest focusing mainly on the Core Scrum and Positive indicators sections. Your team has a lot to gain if you manage to color your playground entirely green. Discuss missing items with the team – would you be interested to try them? Can you see the value in them?
Take only 1-2 new things at a time and give yourself time to investigate and adopt.
If you also filled out the Recommendations part, pay attention to the Velocity measuring – it is extremely beneficial for forecasting major release dates.
As said, these are merely recommendations and food for thought, not must-have rules. For example, in my experience Product Owners usually don’t like to break PBL stories into the smaller sub-tasks, since it causes too much hassle, they prefer to keep the story scopes in healthy boundaries instead.
Scaling section is meant for bigger corporations only, eg when multiple agile teams work on the same product parallelly.
I hope that you find this tool useful in your everyday Scrum Master work!
UPDATE: Of course, if you are knowingly using some agile hybrid methodology like ScrumBan or Scrum/XP or something else, this test is not valid for you, since it follows only “pure” Scrum practices.
Related topics
What is the RICE model in product development?
In product development, we never have enough time or resources to implement all desired initiatives. Product owners constantly evaluate which developments to pursue and which to postpone, and making the right decisions is far from easy. The RICE model helps us make faster and more accurate decisions when prioritizing tasks.
Agile mindset and myths around it
The term “agile” has probably been heard by many people in different contexts – talking about dog training, talking about IT and software development, organizational management topics, and more. I will write down 9 myths that circulate around the term “agile” and that I have often encountered in my work.
Risks of a software project. Sample risk plan.
A dialogue about life itself, in the course of conducting a software audit. Me: “Okay, let’s review the risks of the project at the moment.” Junior project manager: “You know, I’m not really interested in these risks at all, I just want to finish the thing in a cool way.”
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