Nowadays, we can see software in all aspects of our lives. We use it to connect with each other, get various services, manage data and of course handle various physical things like self-driving cars, intelligent houses, medical equipment, and so on. Don’t you think we need a professional software ethic oath to ensure companies care about their users and customers?
All the pre-mentioned things could be dangerous for our lives if companies do not produce them properly. It shows that quality is a really important factor that no producer should compromise with. But what guarantees that all software players like developers, testers, analysts, product designers, … adhere to the ethical behavior in their profession?
You know, cutting quality corners is literally difficult to be discovered until you find its effect on the real lives of customers.
I have recently read about physicians’ oath. It is originally called the Hippocratic Oath which aims to treat the ill to the best of one’s ability, to preserve a patient’s privacy, to teach the secrets of medicine to the next generation, and so on.
I strongly believe we need such the same thing in the software industry. The first benefit of such an oath is that software practitioners understand what ethical behavior is and get familiar with its various aspects and then behave based on them.
Fortunately, a few years ago, several Professional Scrum Trainers (PST) created something that is similar to the concept of this blog post called “Software Professional Code of Ethics”. It wrote:
Software Professional Code of Ethics
“As a software professional, I will conduct myself honestly and ethically wherever I operate in the world. I will adhere to the code of ethics herein and uphold the values of Openness, Courage, Respect, Focus, and Commitment.
I will not waver from any of the following professional standards under any pressure or incentive and:
I will understand and communicate the value of the work delivered.
I will define and uphold a clear and transparent standard of quality and I will not compromise on that standard.
I will not withhold any information that might harm my team, our stakeholders, our users, or the public community.
I will not imply certainty where it does not exist.
I will selflessly share my knowledge with others.
I will continuously improve myself.
I will do the best I can.
I will challenge anyone that does not demonstrate the professional standards herein.
I will uphold this code of ethics for myself and others so we collectively improve the software profession.
By this code, I will abide and subscribe.”
I think it is a great start point and we can use it as the “software ethic oath” that all people in the software profession should swear snd behave based on. What do you think? Share your ideas in the comments section.
In Scrum School, we help people to learn Scrum effectively and empower them to pass the Scrum.org exams with more confidence.
Scrum Definition
Scrum is a lightweight framework for developing and delivering complex products. It is the most famous and popular implementation of Agile mindset. Although understanding it seems simple, being a master of it might need people’s lifetime. Generally, when you read Scrum Guide for the first time, you see a pretty simple abstract guide and may wonder how it works. Indeed, knowing Scrum is different from using Scrum. It means, if you know Scrum, it does not mean you can use it effectively. However, being a master of Scrum needs to be good at both sides. Using Scrum effectively needs to have good knowledge plus long experience in the field. Like a soccer player, you will not be a super player unless you practice hard for a long time in pitches. Being a great Scrum player in the field needs a great understanding of Scrum. It can happen through high-quality training and empowerment materials.
Why Scrum School?
Based on this fundamental need, Scrum School has been founded. Its mission is empowering Scrum practitioners. We follow Scrum.org institute, which is the pioneer organization in sustaining and promoting Scrum all over the world. Scrum.org has great high-quality training courses and really well-designed exams, which help people to evaluate their Scrum knowledge. All people who pass those exams will receive the industry recognized Scrum.org certifications.
We believe those exams are comprehensive and can evaluate all aspects of one’s Scrum knowledge perfectly. However, Scrum.org does not introduce special and focused references and resources to people who want to get ready for the exams and actually leaves it to them. To fill this gap, Scrum School is continuously creating and delivering empowerment materials to exams’ candidates. Our experience shows not only these materials are effective to get ready for Scrum.org exams, but they also help people to understand Scrum’s underneath fundamental concepts that can help them to make and boost their Agile and Scrum mindset. This mindset can also help them to use Scrum effectively in the fields.
Final word
To sum up, our mission is this: We help people to learn Scrum effectively and empower them to pass the Scrum.org exams with more confidence. So, right now, join us for discovering Scrum beautiful world. We are here: https://www.scrumschool.org
Recently, we have decided to use media for explaining Scrum in a simple way. Indeed, we used a true story based on our experience for this purpose. Also, we used motion graphic media for transferring the concept, because videos have the most impact. So here the result; the motion graphic and also its transcript:
A few years ago
We were three colleagues with many big dreams. A few years ago, a manager from the oil and gas industry had told us if we developed special software, most oil companies would be our customer and we would earn a huge amount of money. Since we were really energetic, we just started to develop that software. We rented an office and went into a cave for two years. Even we hired a few developers to produce high quality and perfect software with all required features. Month after month was coming and we had to pay the expenses. I remember, in a case for having a great and perfect user access management, we used two months.
Came out of the cave
Finally, after two years, we came out of the cave and showed our perfect product to the first customer. Unbelievably, they said they didn’t need that product. We thought and supposed they didn’t understand our work. So, we went to the second customer and unfortunately their answer was also no. The third, the fourth, the fifth, and so to the end. It was horrible and like the end of the world. We had wasted a lot of money and even we had to release our developers. Not only we lost too much money, we missed a lot of opportunities and also two years of our lives. Nothing is worse than producing a perfect product that nobody wants.
What was the problem?
There are many similar cases in the software industry. We asked ourselves what happened and thought about it deeply. The fact was that all things that we had thought were certain were only our thoughts not the facts of the customers. Indeed, there were a lot of things in our project which we already didn’t know. So, how could we resolve and handle them? When we thought, we found out that we should have collaborated with our customers from the beginning of the project. We should have produced the most valuable features first, delivered to them, and got feedback. With this policy, we could have corrected our way.
We found out Scrum
While we were checking and reviewing our mistakes, we found out a new way of working for developing software products, which was called Scrum. Amazingly, in that new approach, there were answers for almost all issues that we had already faced through our project. In this method, projects with a lot of uncertainties, that some of their aspects are not known upfront are called complex projects. Then it says complex projects can fail because of many reasons. So, it is designed in a way that can reveal problems as soon as possible within which the team is able to realize the problems and consequently adapts itself with new learnings. You may ask how? Ok, let’s look at this new way of working.
The essence of Scrum
The essence of Scrum is producing a small chunk of the product and delivering it to customers in order to get feedback. This feedback helps the team to correct and adapt its way. This approach is repeated as many times as required until all valid chunks of the product be produced and delivered to customers. Scrum has some red lines. For example, regardless of the product and context, each iteration should not last more than one calendar month. In Scrum, each iteration is called Sprint.
If you want to take the PSM I exam (Professional Scrum Master I), you can use our various empowering products like this:
Deal with requirements and features
In this framework, all requirements and features are collected in a list, which is called Product Backlog. Then, they are ordered by their value by someone whose role is Product Owner. At the beginning of each Sprint, the Development Team selects some features from the top of the Product Backlog to develop during the Sprint. At the end of the Sprint, those features should be shippable and releasable. Why? Because they should be delivered to customers for getting feedback. This is the core concept of the story. When you have to get feedback from the customers, if you made mistakes, you would find them out within a month at most, not two years. Well, the result is obvious. Correcting the way and escaping from those mistakes and failures before they can destroy your whole business.
The Scrum Master
Scrum has really few elements, while like a chess game, being a master of it is fundamentally difficult. For this reason, another role has added to Scrum, which is called the Scrum Master. This person is responsible for promoting and supporting Scrum process implementation. He or she continuously helps and teaches the team to work professionally in the Scrum framework. All three mentioned roles, namely the Product Owner, the Scrum Master, and the Development Team together create the Scrum Team.
Today’s world super-fast changes
By limiting each Sprint’s duration to one month, a powerful mechanism has been created to deal with today’s world super-fast changes. These changes contain requirements changes, customer desire, technology, and business changes. Each change based on our response can be an opportunity or a threat for us. Fortunately, if we use Scrum properly most changes potentially can be opportunities. Creativity has a special position in Scrum. Because it’s the tool to deal with unknowns. Who knows what the next year Apple smartphones look like? If Apple always produces its previous version of smartphones, can it survive in smartphones’ competitive market? All of us saw how Nokia Company went bankrupt.
Conclusion
Finally, I should admit, if we knew Scrum at that time in our project, we may have realized our wrong way within two months at most. Now based on our real heavy failure, we deeply know how Scrum is valuable, which we believe is a fundamental tool for all companies that produce complex products and services and they should not miss it at all. If the story is familiar to you, do not postpone Scrum learning to tomorrow.
Welcome to Scrum world Scrum School
Scrum.org is the home of Scrum. You can find a huge amount of knowledge there.
PSK I exam is a bit expensive, so we have provided a guide for the candidates to prepare, practice and pass it according to our experience.
Scrum.org exams and in this case PSK I exam are challenging and a little bit expensive. So people want to know how they can pass these exams with more confidence. Therefore, we have decided to prepare a series of preparation guides for the Scrum.org exams. Each guide contains minimum mandatory actions that should be done for passing the exam in a suitable timeframe.
Scrum.org has introduced PSK I (Professional Scrum with Kanban I) certificate for all people who want to combine strength of both frameworks. Indeed, each framework i.e. Scrum or Kanban can strengthen each other. For us, as Scrum practitioners, there are a lot of practices in Kanban that can improve our value delivery process dramatically. In this post, we will introduce the PSK I exam (Professional Scrum with Kanban I) step by step preparation guide as follows:
PAL I exam is a bit expensive, so we have provided a guide for the candidates to prepare, practice and pass it according to our experience.
Scrum.org exams and in this case PAL I exam are challenging and a little bit expensive. So people want to know how they can pass these exams with more confidence. Therefore, we have decided to prepare a series of preparation guides for the Scrum.org exams. Each guide contains minimum mandatory actions that should be done for passing the exam in a suitable timeframe.
Scrum.org has introduced PAL I (Professional Agile Leadership I) certificate for all people who have a management position. Indeed, it helps people to transform their mindset from the management world to the leadership world. I believe PAL I exam is tough and for passing it, you should be really prepared before the exam. In this post, we will introduce the PAL I exam (Professional Agile Leadership I) step by step preparation guide as follows:
Finally, for being high-performance, autonomous and knowledgeable Scrum Developer and improving your knowledge, we suggest taking the PSD I exam. To be succeed in this exam use https://elearning.scrumschool.orgPSD I tips and tricks training manual. It provides high-quality, deep and tricky content as a reliable learning source which help you pass the real exam with more confidence.
