A train the trainer session I did last week gave me the idea to write a blog with some tips about the Scrumban simulation. Today I will focus on how to deal with the events that occur. As you know each time a team member throws a 4, he or she needs to pull an event card from the stack.
A first thing to know, is that most events will start the next day (some only the next iteration). But how to deal with some specific events that can occur? I will guide you through some of these events now.
You are ill. You are out for the rest of the week.
This does not mean that you are out for the next 5 days. It is just until the end of the week. If you pull this event card at the end of day 3, you are absent on day 4 and 5 and can continue working the next week.
Your Scrum Master is ill and you need to replace him for the rest of the week.
This is similar to illness. The difference is that you lose half your capacity. You can continue working though.
The backlog item you've been working on, is no longer needed. Take it out.
If you had just been working on unplanned work, this does not count, unless you still have a pawn on another backlog item... In that case, you take that card out. That means: put it aside. You will not implement it anymore.
The backlog item you've been working in has a major scope change
Again, if you have been working on unplanned work, this does not count, unless you still have a pawn on another backlog item.
In that case, you move the card back to the To Do column and wipe of all the dots that were marked.
Change of priorities: the entire team has to do a new planning session and start a new iteration
This is the dirtiest card in the simulation. All value that has been created, is earned. But all work in progress has to be removed. You don't take away these cards. You just wipe off all the marked dots, otherwise you might only have the remaining low value cards left to implement. But you will need to do a new planning session. And this might be a good opportunity to do a retrospective too.
Everybody has to attend a required training and take a test before the end of the iteration. The entire team loses half a day.
I have seen people dealing with this event in a very practical way: they all put a pawn of their color on the event card. Whenever they could not do anything else in their domain for half a day, they removed the pawn from the card. I found this such a great idea, that I wanted to share it with you (actually it was this good practice that made me write this blog).
Helping hands: another team is helping you with your unplanned work.
Normally this is only valid for high and medium priority items, but just in case you only have low priority unplanned work, I wouldn't mind moving these cards to done.
Another team has already implemented a feature you can re-use as is.
Normally you should move the item from the Planned (To do) column and move it to Done. But what if this column is empty? Check the top item from the remainder of your backlog then...
Management decision: team can work with full focus.
This means that no-one needs to roll the dice. Just move the cards and fill the dots.
That's it for now: an overview of how to deal with some events that could use some more explanation how to deal with them. I hope it is useful for you when you practice the Scrumban simulation in your team.