156. Neil Benson dives into the essentials of continuously improving Scrum practices in this episode of the Amazing Apps podcast.

Drawing on the book "Mastering Professional Scrum" by Stephanie Ockerman and Simon Reindl, Neil outlines critical areas for team success, such as creating valuable products and understanding organizational influences. He emphasizes five core capabilities needed for continuous improvement: teaching, facilitation, coaching, technical excellence, and servant leadership.

Neil discusses the continuous improvement process recommended by Ockerman and Reindl, which includes self-assessment questionnaires and root cause analysis to address team issues. He highlights the importance of the Scrum pillars—transparency, inspection, and adaptation—and shows how sprint events like planning and review foster a culture of empiricism, allowing teams to run experiments and refine their practices based on real-world outcomes.

Celebrating the traits of high-performing scrum teams, Neil underscores the significance of being cross-functional, self-managing, and collaborative. He touches upon practices that bolster collaboration within these teams, such as backlog refinement and pair programming, while also stressing the freedom scrum teams have to define their workflows within Scrum guidelines.

Neil also addresses common challenges, such as the absence of key roles during refinement sessions, and recommends using the Five Whys technique to tackle root causes. He provides practical tips like conducting multiple short refinement sessions to prevent release delays.

With actionable insights and a call to action to use the self-assessment questionnaire from the book, this episode is a goldmine for Power Platform and Dynamics 365 teams looking to elevate their Scrum practices. Tune in to learn practical strategies for continuous improvement and master the art of agile with your team.

Don't miss out—subscribe to the Amazing Apps podcast to stay updated on more insightful episodes in the Mastering Professional Scrum series.

RESOURCES

Simon Reindl on LinkedIn
Stephanie Ockerman on LinkedIn
Mastering Professional Scrum from Amazon (affiliate)
Mastering Professional Scrum audiobook on Audible (affiliate)
Stephanie Ockerman's site, Agile Socks
Mastering Professional Scrum on InformIT

Amazing Apps - learn how to build agile Dynamics 365 and Power Platform business apps using Scrum: Recent Episodes

Neil Benson

156. Neil Benson dives into the essentials of continuously improving Scrum practices in this episode of the Amazing Apps podcast.

154. Neil Benson takes us on a journey of learning through experimentation. Starting with the historical origins of smallpox inoculation, Neil discusses the importance of conducting experiments to drive innovation and problem-solving.

153. Neil Benson is joined by Keith Atherton, a proper pro developer. Keith shares his journey from developing custom apps using .NET, C# and SQL Server to embracing and mastering the development of enterprise business applications using the Power Platform.

141. On this episode of Amazing Apps, podcast host Neil Benson is joined by Allan de Castro, a senior technical consultant for the Power Platform at Avanade France.

139. Today’s guest is Emma Beckett, an experienced test professional who runs her own company, Fortitude 17, in London, UK. A professional footballer, Emma pursued a career in software testing, even though her first role in tech was in Desktop Support — hardware, not software!

138. My guest today is Malin Martnes, a Microsoft MVP and MCT who runs her own company MaCoTra AS in Oslo, Norway. As you’ll hear, Malin doesn’t have any technical background on Dynamics 365 and Power Platform but she focuses on using these systems.

133. Today’s guest is Michael Roth, a Power Platform consultant with Avanade who specializes in governance.

130. Sprint 1 is a magical, wonderful, beautiful thing. Find out how my messy, unstructured and un-estimated sprint 1 unfurled on a recent project to build a Power Platform app for a mid-size Microsoft customer in financial services.

125. In this episode of Amazing Applications, Emil Hovgaard and Sheelan Bhana of EY Nordic Tech Hub share the story behind EY's PowerPost application and how it has made the General Ledger posting process easier and faster for the EY organization.

124. When you're using an agile approach, like Scrum, how and when should you document your Dynamics 365 or Power Platform applications? After all, the Agile Manifesto says, "We value working software over comprehensive documentation", right?

116. Dani Kahil interviews Andrew Bibby about a pivotal, multi-year Dynamics 365 business transformation project in financial services.

115. Angeliki Patsiavou is on a mission to help Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform application development teams introduce professional change managers to their projects from inception instead of deferring it until near the end.

114. I'm joined by Microsoft MVPs Guro Faller and Tricia Sinclair. Guro and Tricia are presenting at Scottish Summit in Glasgow in June.

113. Vivian Voss joins me to discuss her upcoming Scottish Summit session, From the Basement to the Cloud - Your Journey from CRM on-premises to Dynamics 365 CE.

112. Dani Kahil interviews Paddy Byrne about the Power Platform's role in enabling Scotland's new recycling scheme for single-use drinking containers.

111. Start here to learn why, when and how to use an agile approach to build Dynamics 365 and Power Platform applications.

110. My current team is stuck in Limbo. We've finished development of a Dynamics 365 application for a local government department and we're tapping our fingers waiting for acceptance testing to start.

109. In this special episode, I'm interviewed by Dani Kahil about my experience delivering an enterprise CRM project at RACQ (the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland).

107. What would you do if you ran a Microsoft partner business and your customer wanted to stack your scrum their with their developers?

106. You and the Microsoft Business Apps product owner are on Teams going through the product backlog. You two are working on it together because that’s how it has always been done. And yet, when you look back at the last few sprints, you realize that is not getting the desired results.

105. Dan Foster, a senior consultant and solutions architect at CRM Dynamics, asks, "Have you found much benefit from your being a scrum master? If so, how did you get that training?"

104. Should we assign items to a developer during sprint planning?

102. Bruce Sithole's team at 265 Mechanix built a Power Portal application for a business to business lender that earned some serious kudos for his customer. Find out how in this episode of Amazing Applications.

101. DynamicsCon starts next week. Lipi Sarkar is presenting two sessions at DynamicsCon and joins me to share the highlights from her presentations as well as her book, Build a Digital Future.

100. Are you looking for better ways to manage your Dynamics 365 and Power Platform requirements in Azure DevOps? Join me and Dani Kahil as we explore what it takes to master your requirements.

99. We all know that good form design is important especially when we're building model-driven Power Apps and Dynamics 365 apps. But what actually makes a good form design?

97. I share five reasons why I think you should avoid analysis in advance when you're building Dynamics 365 and Power Platform applications.

96. I continue the deeper dive into the role of the Product Owner with advanced Product Owner questions.

93. I dive deeper into getting into the right mindset to build applications, including using the Scrum agile approach.

92. Join me with Gail Mercer-MacKay, the founder and CEO of Mercer-MacKay. They have a unique position in the Microsoft ecosystem: they help Microsoft partners clarify their marketing message and produce compelling digital content that inspires Microsoft customers to take action.

89. Join me with Mohammad Mohsin Khalid. And he's the founder, CEO and chief architect at Imperium Dynamics. He and his team built a Power Portal to support a million constituents booking their COVID test appointments, and they did it in less than 100 hours.

88. Join me with Brendan Eger, an Associate Director of Information Systems and Analytics at Partners In Health in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Brendan's story is a fascinating journey of a small, bootstrapped team adopting the Power Platform.

87. Join me with Mandar Zope, a principal consultant at Slalom Consulting from Seattle. Mandar has been busy building business applications that are being used by a hundred thousand users at a global oil and gas company.

86. Join me with Paul Heisterkamp, a Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations solution architect and developer at GWS in Germany.

83. Bonus extended interview with Marc Schweigert, principal program manager on the Power Customer Advisory Team at Microsoft as we talk about Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) approaches suited to novices and citizen developers through to professional developers.

81. Gustaf Westerlund CIO and founder at CRM-Konsulterna asks, "How can we get customers to really understand that an agile approach is best for them?"

80. Richard asks about working with user stories in a Dynamics 365 or Power Platform agile project.

78. Join me with CJ Brooks, a Fundraising and Engagement Architect at Mission CRM as we talk about how Mission CRM closed the doors on their consulting practice to focus on building the Mission CRM fundraising and engagement application for nonprofit organizations.

73. Daryl LaBar and Jonas Rapp, co-hosts of the XrmToolCast join Neil Benson to answer the questions about how to document complex systems when asked to "devise a roadmap for migrating a Dynamics CRM 2013 and a CRM 2016 environment into a single Dynamics 365 online environment ."

72. Michael Nunes asks, "When multiple systems are being delivered by different parties, I find that we have to design the details upfront, then use agile for the delivery of the Dynamics 365 systems. Is this your experience too?"

71. Daniel Kerridge says, "I'm the only developer in my team so I just wondered if there's a special version of Scrum that works in that scenario."

70. Dan Madden, a program manager at Acensus, asks, "What’s the best way to help bridge that gap between [IT and] the business and ultimately the end-users?"

69. In this episode, Andreas Dutz, Business Development Manager at HSO from Bavaria, Germany, asks, "Have you defined what agile means? Are your teams trained in the Agile Manifesto and are your teams applying it today?"

68. What does the structure of a scales business application project look like? What groups and roles do you need when you've got 50 or more team members working together for a year or more to build a large, complex application?

67. In this Q&A episode, Stephen Price , Digital Solution Architect at ITK Consulting in Canada, asks, "How should we manage scope creep within a sprint in an agile project?"

66. Matt Venamore, scrum master at RACQ, asks about how to handle data migration on agile Dynamics 365 projects.

65. Neil discusses the five most important changes in Scrum Guide 2020 for Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 teams:

64. Carolle Bruce, Director of Information Technology at Avcorp Industries in Vancouver, asks, "What's the best argument for when senior management says, 'All this agile stuff is great but I don't see why you'd have a scrum master on your project when you could have an agile PM instead.'?"

63. David Mochrie, a Power Platform consultant at Magnetism in Auckland, asks, "Should we have a standard set of user stories for Dynamics 365?"

61. Mark Llewellyn, Director of Technology at Osmosys Software Solutions in London asks, "How can you be sure you've captured all the requirements?"

60. This year, Scrum is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

59. Neal Carty, a Business Solutions Consultant at Traction On Demand in Toronto asks:

58. I had to fire a client this week.

57. Join me with Ana Inés Urrutia de Souza, a Dynamics 365 HR consultant at FourVision and a rising star in our Power Platform community. Ana shares the story behind the amazing Dynamics 365 for Talent application her team deployed at Centria, in Lima, Peru.

56. The biggest online community event of the year, Dynamics Con 2020, is just around the corner: Wednesday 9 to Thursday 10 September. I'm joined in this special episode by a special guest to discuss this special event -- the event's director, Molly Fuschel.

55. In this second episode on estimating Microsoft Business Applications we answer your financial sponsor's two favourite questions:

54. I'm joined by Dani Kahil, Microsoft Business Applications practice lead at Empired, who shares the story behind one of his client projects, Lives Lived Well.

53. If you're building Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate or Power Virtual Agent applications, when and how should you be estimating your requirements, releases and applications?

52. For this special episode, I asked 15 industry leaders how they were coping with the coronavirus restrictions and what advice they'd give to their younger selves if their career was affected by the impacts of an economic recession.

51. Welcome to the new Amazing Apps show. This episode is a bonus episode for previous subscribers of the Scrum Dynamics podcast explaining the reasons behind the name change and gives you a sneak preview of the new theme music.

49. I'm joined by Gus Gonzalez and Joel Lindstrom to discuss the role of solution architects in agile teams implementing Microsoft Business Applications.

48. My guest is Clément Olivier from Javista in Nantes, France.

47. Is Scrum the best approach to use for every Microsoft Business Application?

46. Ryan Ripley joins me in Amazing Apps to discuss his new book, Fixing Your Scrum.

45. This is a special, bonus episode of Amazing Applications with a live recording from inside my current Scrum teams' daily scrum. Take a sneak peek as my developers share their progress with each other and adjust the sprint backlog as they learn more about what they've accomplished.

44. Someone sends me an "Agile is Dead" article at least once a year. Are these articles with their clickbait headlines just opinion pieces with no data to back up the authors' claims or are they well-researched and thought-provoking journalism?

43. EY Kalman, also known as the CRM Ninja, joins me in this episode of Amazing Apps to reveal the critical factors behind the success of his Dynamics CRM project at Orbis Investments.

42. The topic for this episode is scrum teams. The composition and the characteristics of your scrum team remain fundamental to you having any success with an agile approach when you're implementing business applications.

41. Lots of Microsoft Business Applications teams use Azure DevOps Repos and Pipelines for managing their source code and automating their code integration, build and deployment processes.

40. There are two ways of handling bugs in Scrum:

39. Imagine you're a member of a development team implementing Microsoft Business Applications using the Scrum framework. What do you do when you've completed the item you're working on?

38. If you’re brand new to agile software development and are wondering how an agile approach can be applied to your Dynamics 365, Power Apps, Power BI or Power Automate project, I’ve launched a new free mini-course: Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps.

37. Steve Books is the Chief Technology Officer of Bam Boom Cloud (previously known as Cooper Parry IT Solutions), 2020 winner of the Microsoft Partner of the Year award for Dynamics 365 Business Central.

36. David Conti surprised me with the size of Velrada's project that was a finalist in the 2019 Microsoft Partner of the Year for Dynamics 365 Field Service awards.

35. Mohamed Mostafa is the Solutions Director at TechLabs London, best known for iPropertyCloud, a suite of business applications for property companies.

34. I chat with Andrew Bibby about his successful Dynamics 365 project at Devon Financial Services*.

33. I'm joined by Johan Adenmark and Carolina Edvinsson from NAB Solutions.

32. Have you ever been asked: