Amplio Scrum

Taking Scrum Into the 21st Century

 

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What is Amplio Scrum

Overview

Amplio Scrum is a track in the Amplio Consultant Educators Learning Journey in Amplio University. It can be taught as a 2-3 day private workshop for teams and organizations that have adopted Scrum but now finding themselves not achieving the results they had expected.

It builds on what the people taking it have already learned but adds key aspects that are not present in the Scrum framework. It integrates advances of the last 25 years in Agile that include flow, Lean, and the Theory of Constraints.  These include:

  • a significantly improved product management model that increases innovation while reducing waste
  • a systems-thinking approach that improves both how teams work together
  • a human-centered approach that enables team coaches to better coach people
  • verifiable theory that accelerates learning and reduces resistance

Participants receive several collaboration boards to help in learning, making decisions, and working together.

What Is Amplio Team and Amplio Scrum?

Amplio Team stands on its own and requires no knowledge of Scrum although some familiarty with Agile is helpful. Amplio Scrum is designed for those teams using Scrum and having challenges with it. Amplio Scrum takes advantage of what Scrum adopters know. And provide solutions to many of the problems they have.

Amplio Scrum can be thought of as providing a path from Scrum to Amplio in much the same way that ScrumBan provides a path from Scrum to Kanban (we just didn’t want to call it ScrumPlio).

The Best of Both Worlds

Amplio Team enables you to perform a quick start based on your needs. But it also enables you to migrate from Scrum to it. At the end of this migration, you might be doing something that looks like flow (e.g., Kanban), something that looks like Scrum, or even something in between. In any event, you will have tailored your workflow to match your situation, not require you to follow a framework.

Amplio Team enables this because it provides:

  • clarity on the causes and effects underneath complex knowledge work that can be seen and a way to work with factors that can’t currently be seen.
  • systems thinking and value stream analysis to look at the whole.
  • an integration of how to convey critical concepts with the concepts.
  • management friendly explanations as to why Scrum works. This assists management in shifting from micro-managing people to improving the system
  • an advanced learning model to accelerate removing impediments
  • several Lucid collaboration boards to assist in decision-making, working together, and learning. 
  • a product management approach based on the Jobs To Be Done Framework which has proven to be much more effective in creating innovative products.

The above enables understanding right up front. This avoids resistance and accelerates learning.

By being part of a larger system, Amplio Scrum enables users to add deeper concepts to their practices without ever abandoning them. Think of Amplio Scrum as a set of training wheels. When you want to go beyond them, you can add new concepts without abandoning what you’ve learned.

The Need for Amplio Team

Scrum has crossed the chasm. This means that it is no longer just being used by innovators and early adopters. It seems that almost everyone is attempting Scrum at some level. But more significantly, it is being used in more and more places for which it wasn’t designed. Scrum per the Scrum Guide requires cross-functional teams and 1-4 weeks of planning. Many teams don’t meet this requirement. Since Scrum is immutable, it provides no insights on how to transition to its requirements or what to do when it’s not appropriate to meet them.

Amplio Team keeps the vision of a simple start to create effective teams while providing solutions that work for them.

Amplio Team Goes Beyond Hybrid Approaches

There’s little question that the hybrid approach of blending Scrum with Kanban is useful. It also provides a means for Scrum teams to go beyond the limits of Scrum. But Scrum and Kanban are really recipes formed from specific roles, events, artifacts, and rules. Amplio Scrum gives you both a starting recipe to keep it simple while enabling you to create a recipe tailored to your needs.

This is important in the real world, where even product development teams will have times when planning ahead is not the proper way to work. It also enables teams using different methods to work well together because both know the methods’ basis.

The Amplio Team / Amplio Scrum track in Amplio University takes you from a team coach or a Scrum Master to high proficiency in a matter of months.

This track is part of the Amplio Consultant Educator Learn Journey. Go here to learn more and register.

Now includes live Q&A sessions 4 times a week.

It is expected that an enrollee in Amplio University has a basic understanding of Agile or Scrum. If they don’t readings to get them that are presented. The curriculum takes people from the Scrum Guide to what Scrum would be like if it were based on Flow, Lean, the Theory of Constraints and Human-Centered Development.

This removes three impediments Scrum’s foundations puts on its teams:

  1. Being based on empiricism without theory slows learning and results in Scrum needing to be immutable
  2. The lack of theory also requires you to follow to understand which causes resistance and slows learning.
  3. Scrum’s being “purposefully incomplete” requires teams to re-invent known practices, wasting time and often leading new Scrum teams astray.

The value proposition for a Scrum Master

Amplio Scrum takes a person well beyond the capabilities of someone who has taken a PSM II workshop while being more affordable and convenient. Amplio University’s Amplio Scrum track enables learning over time so you can try things out in your workplace, on your team.

It also integrates how to coach each of the concepts involved. And it provides for consulting sessions during the workshop to enage with your particular issues.

There is ample free material on this page to help a Scrum Master go well beyond most other Scrum Masters.

Here’s a small sample: Being a Great Scrum Master Requires Knowing More than Scrum.

The value proposition for a team about to adopt Scrum

Just being “simple to understand” is not enough. It needs to be simple to use. This requires it to be fit for purpose. This involves what practices would be best for you and how to transition from where you are to what you need to do.

Value proposition for a manager who needs hep with his Scrum teams

For the cost of one person taking a PSM II, Scrum@Scale, and coaching workshop you could get five Scrum Masters trained in all three.

Empowering you to understand what works for you

When you blend theory with practice and have a model to explain why Scrum’s practices work, you have greater flexibility in tailoring your approach than Scrum. True, it might not always be Scrum, but then you get to make the choice of doing Scrum “by the book” or something like Scrum that is fit for purpose for you.

When you do this:
– You learn faster
– You can have fit for purpose practices
– You know when a change to a practice will be an improvement.
– You aren’t at the effect of Scrum’s immutability that prevents you from doing practices that make more sense in your situation.

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Differentiate yourself from 80% of Scrum trained only Scrum Masters by spending about 8 hours with Amplio Foundations and watching this video Being a Great Scrum Master Requires More Than Knowing Scrum.

The Amplio Scrum Quick Start

The Amplio Scrum Quick Start a simple, fit-for-purpose start that you don’t have to abandon after a while.

These are actions that will may have you no longer be doing Scrum but which will benefit the team. Most Scrum Masters not only don’t know how to do these but are trained not to.

Having appropriate practices makes Amplio Scrum easier and simpler to use. this avoids much of the resistance we see many teams have iwth Scrum.

Amplio provides support for making the above decisions. 
This also makes it simpler to use.

And when the needs of the team change, the solution the patterns provide can provide more effective solutions in the next context.

It is more important for something to be simple to use than simply built. Consider a Model T vs a Tesla.

Blogs about Scrum of Interest

Using Concepts That May Take You Away From Scrum

Concepts Scrum Masters Are Typically Not Taught How to Do

If You’re Concerned About Your Job as a Scrum Master

Let’s stop complaining about the recent rounds of layoffs of Agile coaches and admit there’s something wrong. Only then can we do something about it.

Once you’ve started using Amplio Scrum you can add more concepts from Amplio as you want to continue your journey of improvement.

Amplio University Attendees Are Given A Support System

Amplio Scrum Coaches are provided several virtual collaboration boards to help them work, teach and make decisions. They also are provided all of the PowerPoint slides used in Amplio University. This represents an effective support system that makes them more efficient in working with their teams.

Why An Amplio Scrum Coach Can Be a Scrum Master for 3-5 teams.

When an Amplio Scrum Coach knows:

  • how to teach Scrum with first principles
  • how to avoid impediments
  • how to improve practices without having to run experiments
  • how to coach people

people tend to resist less and learn more quickly. An Amplio Scrum Coach learns how to enroll team members to help out with Scrum. This means that there is less for the ASC to do. Furthermore, much of the time of Scrum Masters is helping teams work together. Unfortunately, Scrum doesn’t teach much of how to do this. Amplio Scrum provides insights on how teams can work together better.

Cross-team learning is also enhanced because an Amplio Scrum Coach understands the concept of common cause. Common cause errors are those due to the system.  When an error happens in one team, the ASC knows it’ll probably happen in others. This enables the ASC to solve impediments across the teams more efficiently.

Other Things studied

Scrum with Amplio quick start. Learn more about this here.

Attending to the customer journey

Watch this video to learn what a customer journey is as well as learn how to use the customer journey in requirements.

See this case study where the customer journey was used to make a breakthrough product. The document has a link to a video if you prefer.

See Introducing Amplio Scrum and The Amplio Scrum Coach to improve your ability to be a Scrum Master immediately.

See a LinkedIn Post on How To Improve Scrum.

How is it possible to learn so much in such a short time for so little

When you understand theory you learn faster.  See WhyTheory Is so Important.

With this theory you can manifest the “whys” of Scrum to get more fit for purpose practices. See  The Objectives Behind the “hows” of Scrum

Learn the foundations on which Amplio Scrum (actually all of Amplio) are built here

A note to those currently looking for a Scrum Master Position

For the cost of a 2-day Scrum Master course and significantly less than the cost of a PSM II or Scrum @ Scale workshop, you can cover all three workshops and more.

Amplio on your resume won’t help you get a job.
But putting what you learn from its approach just might.

Amplio is not another framework. It’s an approach to solve your problems in knowledge work. Both how to do it and how to convey useful concepts to others.

It’s a collection of what I’ve learned over the last two decades of what works.
It goes beyond the limitations of being purposefully incomplete, having to follow to understand, and ignoring the cause and effects present. This enables you to see which practices work best for you without having to run experiments. It greatly simplifies enrolling others in what to do.

It works at the team and organization level.
For Scrum Masters, it provides deep insights on how to do better.

Enroll in Amplio University and focus on the Scrum Master curriculum and be able to put this on your resume.

I am enrolled in an advanced 6-month Agile education program led by a recognized Lean-Agile thought leader, where I’ve learned how to:
– lead my teams using the best concepts of Scrum and Kanban
– talk to team members in a way that avoids resistance
– organize teams to take advantage of skilled people who have limited capacity
– know which practices best fit our situation without having to run experiments
– engage with management so that they can help their teams deliver value faster

I also have collaboration boards that:
– at the start of a project, help identify the risks that will be faced
– provide better ways to do high and low-level estimation than Planning Poker
– help teams make certain decisions better.

The bottom line is I’ve learned how to fill in the gaps of Scrum that people with just Scrum training don’t know.
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In today’s world, where the number of people applying for Scrum Master / Team Leader jobs is increasing faster than the number of positions available, you can’t just be better – you must also be different.

To help people out of this difficult situation, I’m allowing those currently between positions to defer $500 of the tuition until 30 days after they find a position. This means that for $495, you can enroll in the most advanced learning program available.

Of course, Scrum Masters aren’t limited to the Scrum Master Curriculum and can take any curriculum in Amplio University.