Scrum@Scale

Scrum@Scale is the scaling framework created by the inventor of Scrum. From Fortune 100 companies to start-ups, Scrum@Scale® transforms organizations into Agile enterprises. Scrum@Scale naturally extends the core Scrum framework to deliver hyper-productive results across industries and disciplines. This includes software, hardware, services, operations, and R&D.

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Certified Course

This two-day course qualifies students to take the Registered Scrum@Scale Practitioner (RS@SP) exam and become Registered Scrum@Scale Practitioner. The class provides an overview of how to implement Scrum with thousands of teams. You’ll learn the principles to efficiently refactor your organization to minimize decision delay and to reduce waste. ​This course also allows you to assess the Scrum maturity level of your organization during the two-day class and leave with a plan on how to make the necessary changes to scale Scrum. You will leave with a heat map, impact map, and material to help you scale and refactor your organization.​ 

Who should attend

This course is geared toward scrum masters, product owners, executives, or anyone with knowledge of Scrum and looking to scale their Scrum implementation across the organization. 

Course Outline

The Registered Scrum@Scale course teaches the framework, techniques, concepts to Scale Scrum in a variety of large-scale implementations.  

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The Registered Scrum@Scale Practitioner course covers:

1. Introduction & Teams - Upon completion of this exercise, learners will be able to:

   1. Get hands-on experience with self-organization ○ Get an idea of the various levels of experience of attendees in the class

   2. Identify the other members of their table/team and their scrum experience

   3. Give the instructor an opportunity to understand their key learning objectives​

2. Your Goal - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

   1. Demonstrate an understanding of what we will be creating in this class -- A scaling map based on the components of the Scrum@Scale framework which they will then use to formulate a scaling strategy to take home

   2. Describe the difference between “True Scrum” and “Scrum-But”/”Scrum in name only”

   3. Identify the three examples of different approaches we will be using throughout the class

3. Scrum@Scale What & Why - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

   1. Define Scrum@Scale and its relationship with Scrum

   2. Explain why Components and Known stable interfaces (such as enabling specifications) allow teams to work together effectively

   3. Introduce the S@S Framework at a high-level

   4. Explain how S@S is related to Biological systems

   5. Explain why there is not a prescription for scaling

   6. Explain the importance of culture to scaling

   7. Explain the importance of systems thinking to optimize the whole organization or value stream

4. Game - Upon completion of this exercise, learners will be able to:

   1. Explain through hands-on experience the value of planning, doing, and retrospecting

   2. Understand the scrum cycle as a whole

   3. Describe the value and purpose of cross-team coordination through the Scaled Daily Scrum and Scrum of Scrums

   4. Scrum Master role

      1. Iterative design & test produces better results than excessive planning

      2. Collaboration beats competition inside of a company

      3. Communication is the key to higher productivity

      4. Cross-functional teams and pairing produce better results than an assembly line approach (which mimics waterfall)

5. Scrum Master Cycle - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

   1. Identify the components of the Scrum Master Cycle

   2. Describe how the Scrum@Scale components are defined and explain that each has Goals, Inputs, and Outputs

6. Team-level Process - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

   1. Describe why it’s important to have Scrum working well on one team to scale well

   2. Describe key challenges of scaling Scrum

   3. List goals, inputs, and outputs of the Team-level Process node in a scaled Scrum

   4. Describe the basic elements (3-5-3) of team-level scrum

   5. Asses their reference organizations on their Team-Level Process

7. Scaling & the SM - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

   1. Describe the responsibilities of a Scrum Master

   2. Explain the difference between Scrum of Scrums and Scaled Daily Scrum

   3. Describe examples of Scaled Daily Scrum Questions

   4. Explain the Scrum of Scrum of Scrums pattern

8. Executive Action Team - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

   1. Explain the value of establishing an Executive Action Team in order to scale

   2. Describe the responsibilities of the EAT and the fact that the EAT owns the organizational transformation strategy

   3. Contrast the EAT and a typical PMO

   4. Identify a sample EAT construct

   5. Identify individuals within their reference organization that might be good members of an EAT

   6. Asses their reference organizations on their Executive Action Team

9. The Agile Practice - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

   1. Explain when and why an organization might launch an Agile Practice

   2. Describe the relationship between the EAT and Agile Practice

   3. Explain that the Agile Practice is accountable for the quality of Scrum within the organization

   4. Asses their reference organizations on their Agile Practice

10. Key Scrum Patterns - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Describe the benefits of patterns-based Scrum for Scrum@Scale implementations

    2. Explain that the patterns are not a part of the Scrum Guide but will help create hyperproductive teams

    3. Connect velocity to overall productivity - Remind that velocity does not always equal productivity; only working product is a measure of progress in Scrum

    4. Describe key patterns:

       1. Interrupt buffer - Explain how to calculate an interrupt buffer, describe how to use it, and explain its benefits

       2. Stable teams - Describe the importance of small, stable, dedicated teams

       3. Swarming - Summarize how swarming and reducing context switching improves velocity

       4. Happiness metric

       5. Teams that finish early accelerate faster

       6. Yesterday’s Weather - Explain how to calculate yesterday's weather and describe how to use it

       7. Optional patterns

          1. Collocation/distributed teams

          2. Scrum emergency procedure

       8. Other patterns from Scrum@Scale that you think would be valuable given your context

11. Impediment Removal - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Explain the need for continuous improvement and impediment removal

    2. Explain the importance of making impediments visible at the right level(s) in the organization to effect change

    3. Describe how impediments are escalated in a scaled Scrum

    4. Asses their reference organizations on Impediment Removal

12. Cross-team coordination - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Correctly identify which teams should coordinate via a Scrum of Scrums, and which should not

    2. Describe how different aspects (“what” vs “how”) of cross-team coordination are handled through the Scrum of Scrums and MetaScrum, respectively

    3. Explain the importance of knowledge sharing and standardizing empirically validated practices

    4. Describe the need for teams to understand what they will share in common, where they can improve from learning, and removing or mitigating cross-team dependencies

    5. Asses their reference organizations on Cross-team coordination

13. Super-Sized Scrum - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Describe asymmetrical examples of organizational structures in a scaled implementation

    2. Explain how scarce skills can be shared via virtual teams and service-level agreements

    3. Describe Quality Circles and Communities of Practice at a high-level

14. Scaled Daily Scrum - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Describe the purpose of the SDS as an opportunity for teams in a SoSs to re-plan in order to meet the Sprint Goal of the SoS, identify & mitigate cross-team impediments, and share learnings

15. Product Owner Cycle - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Identify the components of the Product Owner Cycle

16. Scaling the PO - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Explain that the MetaScrum is a team of Product Owners led by a Chief Product Owner responsible for translating a Vision into a single actionable backlog

    2. Describe the MetaScrum Backlog refinement as the forum for stakeholders to express preferences

    3. Identify common symptoms of weak product ownership at both the team level and at scale

    4. Assess their reference organizations’ Executive MetaScrum

17. Agile Organization Design- Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Understand how organizational debt will limit productivity

    2. Organizational Debt- Any structure or cultural characteristic in the organization, procedure, and policy that limits productivity

    3. Compare and contrast Toyota Production System, Lean, Scrum, and Agile and explain how they are connected

    4. Explain the importance of refactoring to improve production

18. Strategic Vision - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Describe the goals, inputs, and outputs of the strategic vision

    2. Explain the importance of being able to measure progress toward goals

    3. Explain how product and organizational agility help improve outcomes

    4. Assess their reference organization on its Strategic Vision

19. Backlog Prioritization - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Explain how the order of priority reflected in the backlog affects a company’s bottom line or relates to a strategic vision

    2. Define business value and describe different sources of business value (market value, risk reduction, etc.)

    3. Identify methods for determining business value

    4. Describe in detail at least one way to prioritize challenging a PO to release earlier in the life cycle (e.g., cost of delay)

    5. Assess their reference organization on Backlog Prioritization

20. Backlog Decomposition & Refinement - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Identify pitfalls that occur in a lack of proactive Product Backlog Refinement in single-team Scrum. Emphasize the importance of not only of proactive refinement in Scaled situations but the importance of joint refinement activities.

    2. Identify the goals, inputs, and outputs of Product Backlog Refinement in scaled Scrum

    3. Understand the need for an agile architecture in the backlog

    4. Understand effective techniques for joint refinement (story maps, impact mapping, string diagrams, etc.)

    5. Assess their reference organization on Backlog Decomposition and refinement

21. Release Planning - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Describe how Release Planning is a planning horizon and not associated with delivery

    2. Explain how Release Planning answers two questions: When do the customer and organization realize value?

    3. Demonstrate tools for generating a Release Plan

    4. Explain how to create a release burndown

    5. Describe how un-done work and emergent work affect Release Planning

    6. Assess their reference organization on Release Planning

22. Deployment- Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Describe the goals, inputs, and outputs of Deployment

    2. Demonstrate an understanding of different approaches to deployment

    3. Explain the benefits of increasing automation in the deployment process

    4. Describe the contextual nature of deployment and how this cadence may differ from company to company or even within the same organization.

    5. Emphasize the importance of the Scrum of Scrums as a Release Management team.

    6. Assess their reference organization on its deployment practices

23. Feedback - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Identify the goals, inputs, and outputs of feedback in a scaled Scrum.

    2. Describe the importance of feedback from multiple sources such as

    3. Stakeholders, Customers, Development Team members.

    4. Explain the concepts of The MVP and The Pivot as they relate to feedback

    5. Explain that feedback can apply to both product and deployment process

    6. Assess their reference organization on Feedback

24. Metrics & Transparency- Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Identify the goals, inputs, and outputs of Metrics & Transparency in a scaled Scrum

    2. Explain the importance of context and the need to understand what is being measured prior to adopting S@S for effective comparison of how a company operated previously

    3. Identify different lenses for measuring progress and give sample metrics

    4. Explain the value of looking at metrics together

    5. Assess their reference organization on Metrics & Transparency

25. Where Do I Start? - Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Complete the Component Assessment Summary for their reference organization based on the answers from the “your goal” section and the self-assessments in each of the component modules

    2. Identify the highest priority component to focus on and create a sample scaling backlog for implementing or improving that component.

26. Course Wrap-up and Retro- Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

    1. Sign-up to access the exam, course material, survey and certificate

    2. Give the instructor feedback on the course and propose ideas

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Additional Course Benefits

Learn Distributed Scrum

Are you or your organization challenged by globally distributed teams? No need to worry, our instructors are experts in distributed Scrum collaboration. In addition to Scaling Scrum, our students will also learn the principles for effective collaboration in distributed Scrum environments. This is an interactive class with lectures, exercises, demonstrations, facilitated discussions, and games to illustrate the principles being taught and to maximize your understanding. Students will interact using the same tools and skills necessary for effective distributed Scrum collaboration. These include:

• Maximizing the use of online conferencing platforms to improve collaboration

• Online estimating using various mediums

• Using digital Agile project management platforms

• Collaborating with online communication platforms 

• Group planning using digital whiteboards  

Gain Access to Your Own Learning and Coaching Community

You will be able to connect with your fellow students and instructors after class via classroom team channels. These channels help to build a community of Registered Scrum@Scale practitioners that lives long after the class session

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SEUs and PDUs

You'll be able to claim 14 Project Management Institute (PMI)® Professional Development Units (PDUs).* and 16 Scrum Educational Units (SEUs) with the Scrum Alliance after completing this course.  ​