BOOK: Actionable Agile Tools - Jeff Campbell

The book Actionable Agile Tools - Practical tips and tools from ten years of Agile
(by Jeff Campbell) presents some ideas / tools for better Agile/Scrum.

Some ideas / tools in the book are summarized below (this is the 5-line summary with more or less 5 lines). The book is free to read online, so if this summary it "too summarized", try to read the book.
Remember, as the author recommends, if it works ok. If not, try anything else (move to the next tool and/or idea).

Better sprint retrospectives

SR is also sometimes called "coffee room whining ceremony"

• Talk about everything
• It's someone's else fault
• Nothing changes

Retrospective:

• Talk about one thing
• What can we do?
• Experiments

Retrospective vs project post-mortem = bad term

• symptom
• root causes
• experiment: Start... ; start...
• success criteria: At least 2 bugs prioritized at each sprint (for example)
• follow up: In 4 weeks; actionable person (that can delegate to others)

Post-its with names and flowers

Showing recognition (in front of the team) increases team spirit.

Tools for iterations

Who knows what "sprint 15" is or means (a few months after it was done)?
Solution: choose a tasty theme; name sprints alphabetically: apple pie, blueberry pie, chocolate cake, etc.
Eat the thing (really)
Enjoy.

Tool: Bugs for breakfast

A tool for quality: legacy products in bad shape?
Have a ceremony once per week (approx.)
Focus on quality-related things.
Examples:

• unnapropriated tool in area X
• few tests
• fix issues
• create test

List anything that contributes to increased quality. And manage actions derived from the meeting.

Tool for data based decisions

Scrum. Board

Ticket for:
planned, critical, support, meetings, admin

Make ticks in the wall per hour spent or per type of activity performed (to count ticks in the end).

Tool for retrospectives: Event log

Board with dates and what happened (for remembering those events easily later on)

Tool: Door calendar

Useful for production releases.

Move post its (as production releases dates change, if they change).
That way everyone sees it (if it is in the door).

Tool: Resilience map

Tool for cross functionality.
SPOF: To be avoided (at all costs)
Build a matrix of skills vs team member name, basic, med., high
That way it is easy to spot the gaps (where is the issue, if smth goes wrong with that system/skill we are blocked)
Show it to managers (the gaps become more evident and the team might be reinforced, or having more training as a result)

Tool: in-line definition of done

A tool for quality (so that no-one forgets checking everything before marking things as done).
US cards can have the checklist printed next to the / in the US card.

story name / DoD (check list, answer could be N/A for this US)
task name / DoD (could be different than the one for US)

Morning meeting protocol 

A tool for meeting efficiency.

Boring daily meetings?
Morning meetings should be energizing:
anything to share?
anything today?
does anyone needs our help?
any unplanned tasks?
is JIRA up to date?
is the build up to date? Jenkins?
etc,

WIP tool

A tool for kanban:

who ignores the WIP?
3 rules broken frequently

When blocked what should we do?
Wait? Or start new task?
What to do? Work in this order:

• cofee
• try to unblock blocked items
• see I somone can finish off halted olwork off the mob
• use the tech swimlane (technical debt)
• have a retro on blocked items (if they are so many and being consistently a problem)

Tool: Not now backlog

A tool for dealing with "junk" (old epics and user stories that are in the PBL for ages).

1st: Convince to throw the huge backlog away

If not successful use this tool:

• decide what now means: Q1,1,month
• create a "deep backlog"
• move all the crap you never going to do and...
• forget about it

Tool: Visualized flow - a tool for refinement

The team "commits" to the sprint just to leave the room: Estimate and leave the room (while sometimes asking questions about the US in the process). If so use this tool:

First:
Several lanes: Customer | Team | Bugs | Marketing | Backlog
Move to the last lane IN ORDER
(top items have higher priorities)


Second:
backlog. PO refinement. Team refinement. Ready: Move items to the last lane as they are really ready (in order?)


Third:
Only choose ready items that are ready that fit the sprint

Fourth
Sprint = Todo... Deployed | Closed

Fifth

Show progress in another task board, so that other stakeholders understand and see the progress.
The task board shows the sprint contents in different lanes (so that they know that that MKT feature is being done)

These tools help to Facilitate communication (to other departments in the company)

The bottom line

Don't try to make teams make something that they don't want to do.
Try the approach (to pass the initial resistance): Let's have it a try for 3 weeks and then analyze results. Again, if it works ok. If not try anything else (move to the next tool and/or idea).

Further info at: https://leanpub.com/actionableagiletools

(2016-06-09: typos - kudos R. Azevedo)