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

#63. David Mochrie, a Power Platform consultant at Magnetism in Auckland, asks, "Should we have a standard set of user stories for Dynamics 365?"A long time ago, I tried to make it easy to write detailed user interface design specifications for Dynamics CRM using a wireframe prototyping tool called Axure RP Pro.I spent hundreds of hours building replicas of hundreds of Dynamics CRM screens that I planned to reuse over and over again in my specifications.But it didn't work out that way for me.And I don't think a standard set of user stories would work out for David, either.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#62. Anand Kushalnagar, a project manager at Nexon Asia Pacific in Sydney, asks, "At the moment, we are using a hybrid implementation approach for our projects. How can you deliver Dynamics 365 business central projects in a fully agile methodology when there are so many dependencies between the various modules?"You can transition to Scrum gradually by introducing one or two agile practices to your team each sprint.ERP teams working on Dynamics 365 Business Central, Finance & Operations, Supply Chain or HR are slowly learning how to embrace Scrum even when there are interdependent modules, and we can't always release small increments into production.One way to do that is to deliver incremental features and co-ordinate closely and frequently with other team members or teams unblock interdependencies you might have in your product backlog.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#61. Mark Llewellyn, Director of Technology at Osmosys Software Solutions in London asks, "How can you be sure you've captured all the requirements?"Traditional approaches, like Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step, pretend that we can capture all the requirements upfront at the start of a project before we've started development.Upfront requirements analysis doesn't work. You can't capture requirements by writing them down, and you shouldn't try to uncover requirements before your users know something about Power Apps or Dynamics 365 and your developers know something about your users.Story mapping is an alternative method to help you capture more of your requirements. But you'll never capture them all. So don't try too hard, Mark.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#60. This year, Scrum is celebrating its 25th anniversary.To celebrate, the Scrum Guide 2020 is being published at a free global launch event at 10:00 EST on Wednesday 18 November 2020.Click here to register for the Scrum Guide 2020 launch eventThe launch event is being hosted on Zoom, and the largest Zoom plan has an attendee limit of 1,000. Register for the event today, and join the session early to make sure you can get in.I expect the Scrum Guide 2020 to be even leaner and simpler to help more practitioners in new industries and domains adopt Scrum.I’m excited about the changes and I’m planning to incorporate significant changes to my Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps course as Scrum.org also updates the Professional Scrum Master certification syllabus.Student shout outCongratulations to Michael Handley, IT Project Manager at Health Carousel in Ohio, who joined my Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps audio course and recently achieved his Professional Scrum Master certification. If you’re interested in learning the Scrum framework and how to apply it to Power Apps and Dynamics 365 projects at a much lower cost then the audio course might be an option. It’s US$29 and contains audio versions of all the videos, the quizzes and the practice exam. Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#59. Neal Carty, a Business Solutions Consultant at Traction On Demand in Toronto asks:How does the Professional Scrum Product Owner certification compare to the Professional Scrum Master certification, and is it relevant for Dynamics 365?What's the best way to acquire the knowledge required for PSPO certification?How can we accelerate our learning and avoid high-fees for generic, in-person PSPO courses?Can we mix certifications between Scrum.org and Scrum Alliance?Resources mentioned in this episodeScrum.org Professional Scrum Master I training and certificationScrum.org Professional Product Owner I training and certificationScrum Alliance Certified Product Owner training and certificationProfessional Scrum Product Owner by Don McGreal and Ralph Jocham (affiliate)Product Mastery: From Good to Great Product Owner by Geoff Watts (affiliate)Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#58. I had to fire a client this week.I felt terrible that I wasn't able to help, yet relieved that I stuck to my approach and my principles.Listen in to find out what happened.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#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.Ana came from an HR administrator role and today is an HR application functional consultant at FourVision.Ana's project team created a Dynamics 365 for Talent companion app using Power Apps to enhance the recruiting process at Centria.HR departments and their applications are often treated as a cost to the organisation.This is slowly changing but sometimes HR professionals could do more to improve how they are perceived.COVID-19 has presented HR professionals with an opportunity to lead their company's culture.It took a small team of just three people to build the Power App.Part-way through the project, the client asked for robotic process automation (RPA) to help improve the efficiency of their HR processes.At the end of the project, Microsoft announced that Dynamics 365 for Talent was being deprecated.The client wasn't happy, of course, but they are able to use Talent Attract and Onboard until 2022.The upside of Microsoft's changing product strategies is that Microsoft partners have become more flexible in their thinking and approaches. Configuring Dynamics 365 for Talent was relatively easy. The hardest part of the project was integrating the Power App with SAP, which involved a dependency on another team.The project's success was assisted by Ana's HR career background which helped her empathise with her stakeholders.There was very open and transparent communication between the project team and its stakeholders that built trust.A third factor that contributed to the app's success was the confidence and leadership of the HR general manager (who had been Ana's former co-worker).Connect with AnaLinkedIn: Ana Inés Urrutia de SouzaBlog: AnaInesUrrutia.comTwitter: @AnaInesUrrutiaSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#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.You can register for free today at DynamicsCon.com.I'm presenting "Tell Me a Story", which will be packed with proven practices for managing your Dynamics 365 or Power Apps product backlog. My session is 9am US Central Time, Wednesday 9 September.I'll be available during and after my session to answer your questions and hang out with Amazing App builders. I hope to see you there.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#55. In this second episode on estimating Microsoft Business Applications we answer your financial sponsor's two favourite questions:How long is it going to take?How much is it going to cost?If you're a Dynamics 365 or Power Platform project manager, business analyst, solution architect, pre-sales consultant, developer, or in business development, you'll find out how to answer those key questions in this in-depth episode.For full show notes and transcript, visit https://customery.com/004Check out part 1, Estimating Power Platform and Dynamics 365 applications, to discover more about forecasting how long it's going to take and how much it's going to cost.To join my free Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps mini-course, visit https://customery.com/foundations.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#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.How the Lives Lived Well CRM project started with a review of the high-level requirementsAdopting Scrum gradually during the course of the projectThe benefit of having a scrum master (or a project manager) who is familiar with ScrumDani's advice for Microsoft customers who are new to the product owner roleUsing a blend of partner and customer resourcesChallenges they had switching from Voice of the Customer to FormsProGoing live as the COVID-19 pandemic hit AustraliaPitching an agile approach to prospective clientsUsing Azure DevOps for product backlog management and managing test casesDani's requirements mastering and solution envisioning peer groupThe Amazing App show's first review on PodchaserShow ContactsDani Kahil on LinkedInEmpiredLives Lived WellCustomery Academy students: Luis Guzman and Matt BaumShow ResourcesDani Kahil's blogDani Kahil's Mastering Solution Envisioning peer groupScrum for Microsoft Business AppsAmazing Applications show on PodchaserSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#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? Check out part 2, Estimating how long and how much, to discover more about forecasting how long it's going to take and how much it's going to cost.For full show notes and transcription, visit: https://customery.com/002We need to estimate our requirements for two reasons: time and moneyWe don't always need to estimate our applications, but exceptions are rareAccuracy and precision are different thingsEstimation is not a one-time activity and should be repeatedAre we estimating effort or complexity or something else?Ideal time, story points and t-shirt sizesMy recommended estimation unitsSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#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.James PhillipsSarah CritchleyKathrine HogsethNeil ParkhurstMohamed MostafaElaiza BenitezDian TaylorLeon TribeFrieda MaherDalia RaphaelAndrew BibbyLisa CrosbieCedrick HolmesDavid KoharAndrew WelchSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#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.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#50. Chris Kendrick is the founder and CEO of Mercury xRM, who develop recruitment software on Dynamics 365 Sales. We discuss parsing resumes (and fine-tuning your own resume), as well as entity model designs, ISV product development, implementation approaches, remote training and user adoption incentives.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#49. I'm joined by Gus Gonzalez and Joel Lindstrom to discuss the role of solution architects in agile teams implementing Microsoft Business Applications.We chill out on the mics and discuss:Why weren't Joel and Guz at MVP this year?Intrinsic and extrinsic solution architectsWhat is the role of a solution architect today? Resource and delivery co-ordinationGo-to person and a face for the developersCan a solution design document be dangerousIs the blueprint the new solution design document?Decision logs and the reasons why it's designed that wayGus GonzalezGus Gonzalez on LinkedInGus Gonzalez on TwitterEleva8 Solutions websiteCRM MVP PodcastJoel LindstromJoel Lindstrom on LinkedInHitachi Solutions America on LinkedInCRM.Audio PodcastSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#48. My guest is Clément Olivier from Javista in Nantes, France.Clément was recently awarded a Power Platform FastTrack Recognized Solution Architect designation. He was one of 8 first-time Power Apps architects and 5 Power BI architects to be recognised, in addition to a new group of Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations and Customer Engagement architects.It's a recognition from the Microsoft FastTrack team within the Business Apps product engineering group of a solution architect who consistently exhibits deep architecture expertise and creates high-quality solutions during customer engagements. Congratulations to all of you.I invited Clément to share with some of the factors behind one of his recent successful projects in which his team built two Power Apps for a kitchen design factory.Listen in as we discover how they used a concierge app to welcome guests and capture their sentiment regarding kitchen samples using Azure Cognitive Services. Clément’s team used a rapid prototyping technique to get early feedback from users on the features they needed in their kitchen design Power App. One of his recommendations is to know the capabilities of the different components available — canvas and model Power Apps, CDS, Azure services so you can make the most appropriate design choices.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#47. Is Scrum the best approach to use for every Microsoft Business Application?No!Join me, as we explore the Stacey and Cynefin models that help us make judgements about which types of applications are suited to a Scrum approach and which aren't. Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#46. Ryan Ripley joins me in Amazing Apps to discuss his new book, Fixing Your Scrum.Ryan is a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org. We also discuss:The suitability of Scrum for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform projects. Is the Scrum framework appropriate for enterprise Dynamics 365 ERP projects and smaller Power Apps projects?Ryan’s advice for line-of-business managers who are taking on the product owner role for the first time in their Microsoft Business Applications project.Whether it’s a good idea for scrum masters to take product owner training.The range of courses and certifications available from Scrum.org and who should consider taking the Professional Scrum Foundations course.How program, project and release planning practices can be added to the Scrum framework.What’s in the next version of the Scrum Guide (if Ryan and I were invited to edit it).And Ryan’s favourite topic, the sprint goal.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#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. Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#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?Here's one, Agile software development is dead. Deal with it. It was written by Jason Bloomberg and published in SiliconANGLE.I have some fun with the author's claims that agile software is dead because it's 19, is impossible to scale, and promotes exclusion.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#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.Listen in as he reveals his critical success factors on this project.ResourcesEY Kalman on LinkedInTheCRMNinja on TwitterTheCRM.Ninja websiteTheCRMNinja on YouTubeOrbis Investments websiteSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#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.I recently refreshed the content of the scrum team section in my Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps course. In this refresh, I added a new video which answers frequently asked questions about scrum teams. I thought it would be a good idea to share some of those FAQs with the Scrum Dynamics audience to give you a sneak peek into the kind of topics you'll find in the course.Student shout-out to Jackie Walker from Capgemini and Veronica Kamph from CRM-Konsulterna.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#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.But what about using Azure DevOps Boards to plan, track and collaborate on your work in a Dynamics 365, Power Apps, Power Automate or Power BI project?Tricia Sinclair, a CRM Pre-Sales Consultant at DXC Technology, is on a mission to help us all use Azure DevOps Boards for more than Repos and Pipelines.ResourcesTricia Sinclair on LinkedInTricia Sinclair on TwitterTricia Sinclair websiteSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#40. There are two ways of handling bugs in Scrum:Bug Estimators treat bugs like any other product backlog item. They write a card, estimate it, add it to the product backlog, prioritise it and work on it during a future sprint.Bug Zappers try and avoid writing cards for bugs and they never estimate them. Instead, they try and zap bugs as soon as they are discovered.Mike Cohn is a Bug Estimator but Mitch Lacey is a Bug Zapper (so is almost every other Scrum trainer and team).Listen in to find out which approach I recommend for Microsoft Business Applications teams using Scrum. Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#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?Inspired by my favourite TV show of all time, The West Wing, here's the Definition of Next that my team uses to answer the question, "What's Next?"Thanks to The West Wing Weekly podcast and to my scrum master, Matthew Venamore, for the inspiration for the Definition of Next.Visit customery.com/39 to download my Definition of Next checklist.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#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.The course is ideal if you are interested in learning about agile software development and how business apps projects can benefit from an agile approach. After taking this course, you'll understand the history of agile software development, and it's values and principles. You'll also discover the Scrum framework and the benefits it can bring to your Dynamics 365, Power Apps, Power BI or Power Automate application.In about an hour, the Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps course will help you understand agile software development, and the basics and benefits of the Scrum framework in six high-quality videos, with captions, transcripts and quizzes.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#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.Bam Boom Cloud is a mid-market accounting firm based in the UK. They've had a lot of success with the partner-to-partner business model that has eluded so many other Microsoft partners.Steve also shares his insights into Bam Boom Cloud's innovative business development process for qualifying prospective clients and engaging them remotely on rapid projects to deploy Dynamics 365 Business Central quickly and successfully. It was the repeatability of Bam Boom Cloud's process that contributed to their Microsoft PotY award.Well done Steve, Vicky and the Bam Boom Cloud team.ResourcesSteve Brooks on LinkedInBam Boom Cloud on LinkedInBam Boom Cloud websiteSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#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.I had always assumed that PotY awards were a recognition of complex, enterprise projects successfully delivered by Microsoft's finest.Listen in as David reveals the size of Velrada's project at engineering maintenance company, Monadelphous. He also shares with us Velrada's agile approach, the tools that his team used to deliver the project and the importance of helping your customer's IT team learn about Dynamics 365.ResourcesDavid Conti on LinkedInDavid Conti on TwitterVelrada on LinkedInVelrada websiteMondelphous websiteSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#35. Mohamed Mostafa is the Solutions Director at TechLabs London, best known for iPropertyCloud, a suite of business applications for property companies.In this episode, Mohamed joins me to discuss the successful implementation of iPropertyCloud at Eagle Housing*. Eagle Housing is a rapidly-growing social housing organisation that manages 11,000 properties across the UK.Eagle Housing was referred to TechLabs London by another customer when their original Dynamics 365 project wasn’t delivering the expected results.Eagle Housing went live in production eight weeks after re-starting their project with TechLabs London! Then they used an agile approach to iteratively and incrementally enhance the system every four weeks based on feedback from the users.Using an industry solution, like iPropertyCloud, TechLabs London is able to deliver most of the features that users need in that initial release. Starting with an industry solution was a critical factor in the project’s success.They had the right people from the customer’s organisation on the project team including business analysts to provide and prioritise the requirements, and users available to test the application and provide their feedback.Although Eagle Housing’s board of directors was split in their support for the Dynamics 365 project, because of the earlier project, Mohammed was able to persuade them to give his team a couple of months to produce results.Not only has TechLabs London found a successful way of delivering projects remotely, they even have examples of customers they have never met, evaluating and acquiring iPropertyCloud and going live in production.They had to keep a can-do attitude when faced with challenges integrating Dynamics 365 with an existing system managed by another vendor on behalf of Eagle Housing.Mohamed invited the Microsoft team to meet Eagle Housing several times throughout the project. You don’t need to be an enterprise customer these days. Microsoft loves to hear from and meet any successful customer. And these success stories are good news for all Microsoft partners too (which is one of the reasons I’m producing this podcast series).Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#34. I chat with Andrew Bibby about his successful Dynamics 365 project at Devon Financial Services*.Andrew is a Microsoft Business Applications MVP with over 12 years’ experience implementing Dynamics CRM and Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement for several Microsoft partners and through his own company as an independent project advisor.The CRM project at Devon Financial Services was a five-year business transformation programme to improve the efficiency of their financial advisors by digitising paper-based client on-boarding and sales processes. Andrew’s role as an independent project advisor is to assist the customer and their Microsoft partner to achieve the project’s outcomes.Listen in as Andrew highlights several critical factors to the success of the CRM project at Devon Financial Services:The value of using an independent project advisor especially, if you’re a Microsoft customer with insufficient capacity or previous experience implementing Dynamics 365.Use a proof-of-concept to mitigate technical and business risks early in the project.Don’t change Microsoft partner (if you can help it).Get the right people on the team.Using Azure DevOps as a single source of all requirements and work tracking.Consistent executive sponsorship.An emphasis on change management, not just with the users, but also a communication effort within and across the project workstreams.Having a co-located project team to improve daily communications.Requirements are fundamentally important.ResourcesAndrew Bibby on LinkedInAndrew Bibby on TwitterProximo3 on LinkedInProximo3 websiteSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#33. I'm joined by Johan Adenmark and Carolina Edvinsson from NAB Solutions. NAB Solutions was a finalist in the 2019 Microsoft Partner of the Year awards for the innovative work migrating 25 Dynamics NAV customers to Dynamics 365 Business Central within just a few months.Johan and Carolina share their experience undertaking so many cloud migrations and how they've had to transform how NAB Solutions works in order to migrate or deploy one customer every couple of days.We also learn their advice for nominating your organisation for the PotY awards. This was the first time that NAB Solutions had entered and they've achieved a finalist position in their first go.Download the PotY award rules, guidelines, judges' advice and FAQs from the Microsoft Partner awards site.ResourcesJohan Adenmark on LinkedInCarolina Edvinsson on LinkedInNAB Solutions on LinkedInSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#32. Have you ever been asked:"How much have you customised Dynamics 365?""Is our CRM system customised more or less than average?""Have we customised our system too much?"I've heard this question lots of times from IT leaders who want to know whether our Dynamics 365 system will continue to be supportable, extensible, updateable and performant.But how should we answer it? Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#31. Have you ever had a Dynamics 365 or Power Apps disaster?I share the tale of my failed Power Apps Portals project. It got cancelled by the client before we released it to production.What went wrong? Are there warning signs that you can spot to avoid a Dynamics disaster of your own?Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#30. Emergent design is an advanced practice for Microsoft Business Application team experienced in Scrum.What is emergent design?When we practice emergent design, the development team designs the solution to meet the users’ needs just before we build the feature.The opposite of emergent design is up-front design. This is when the solution is designed in the Design phase of the project, usually by a solution architect, based on the requirements specification published in the Analysis phase, and before any software has been developed.Advantages of emergent designCompared to designing all your features up-front near the beginning of the project, emergent design offers several advantages:The development team are working closely with the users so they have first-hand experience of their current pain points and future needs so there is less reliance on written requirements specifications.Once we’ve designed the solution, we can estimate it. The estimates are based on building previous features by this team for these users, and the estimates enable the product owner to determine whether the feature is valuable enough to build or defer.Our experience building working features for our users means that our designs are much more likely to meet their needs and our estimates are much more likely to be accurate than designs and estimates guessed at during a Sure Step project.Listen to Scrum Dynamics podcast episode 30 or watch the video on YouTube to find out why I love emergent design and how I used it on my recent project to find the best possible design for integrating Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement with Adobe Campaign.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#29. Can you use a definition of done for a sprint?I outline six ideas for a definition of done for a user story and three ideas for a definition of done for a sprint.According to the Scrum Guide, the definition of done helps us agree on when a product backlog item is complete. A sprint, on the other hand, is a time-boxed event so it's done when the time is up.But my teams have found it useful to have a definition of done for a sprint too. And one of our criteria is to run the Power Apps Solution Checker on our custom solutions. The Power Apps Solution Checker is now generally available in Dataverse. It runs hundreds of checks on your plug-ins, customer workflow activities, web resources and configurations and warns you if there are any issues. Running the Power Apps Solution Checker at the end of every sprint helps my team ensure that their solutions are supported, maintainable, extensible and won't cause any performance issues.What definition of done do you use for your user stories? Do you use a definition of done for sprints or releases? I'd love to know in the comments.Links mentioned in the show:Scrum Mastery book giveaway enter before 21 April 2019 to win a copy of Geoff Watts' book.Customery Insiders subscribe and receive my Periodic Table of the Elements for Dynamics 365.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#28. Shawn Tabor wants to know whether to estimate project effort in days or story points. Aren't they the same thing?I've used four ways of estimating effort in my Dynamics 365 projects:Counting cardsDaysT-shirtsStory pointsEstimating in days is an absolute estimation method, whereas t-shirts and story points are both relative estimation methods. This means that we compare the relative size of items using a scale, rather than trying to estimate the absolute size.Story point estimation has several benefits:It's not as critical to know exactly what types of work are included in the estimateStory points encourage me to estimate how long it'll take the team to get the story done, not just me or my partStory point estimates don't need to be re-estimated if our velocity changes if we change our definition of done or our team compositionHumans are better at relative estimation, which Neil tries to illustrate with the land area of countries.Shawn, stop estimating Microsoft Business Applications projects in days and start using story points!ResourcesShawn Tabor on LinkedInCRM Hobbit on TwitterCRM Hobbit websiteSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#27. Jonas Wauters from KPMG Belgium has a challenge pitching a Dynamics 365 project using Scrum to a prospective client. In particular, he'd like to know how to handle it when clients ask those three little questions:What are you going to deliver?When are you going to deliver it?How much is it going to cost?Neil's advice is to avoiding assuming that if a client is familiar with agile that everyone in the client's team is familiar with Scrum. Make sure you describe your Scrum framework in your proposal and presentation so that everyone has a common understanding.Neil also describes how he uses user story maps to help clients visualise the scope, timeline and costs associated with a Dynamics 365 project.You can find out more about story maps for Dynamics 365 here: https://customery.com/storymaps. Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#26. Dan Barber, from the Customery Crew, wanted to know what it would be like inside some of Neil’s scrum events. In Scrum Dynamics 26, Neil walks Dan through one of his recent ten-day sprints day-by-day from sprint planning on Monday morning to the sprint review two weeks later. Here’s how it went…Day One. Sprint planning is at 3pm for two hours on Monday afternoon. We finalise the sprint goal, determine and determine the sprint backlog. On Tuesday morning, we start work on any stories carried over from the previous sprint, one-point stories and spikes. The Dynamics 365 squads hold their daily scrums at 9.15am and 9.30am. On Tuesday morning there’s a showcase for our business stakeholders. Tuesday afternoon is our retrospective for the previous sprint.Day Two. We have a technical design session on Wednesday morning to finalise the technical designs for the more complex stories. In the afternoon the analysts run a storytime workshop to elaborate and estimate stories for a future sprint.Day Three. The first product owner review session is on Thursday afternoon. It’s an opportunity for the tester to demonstrate any completed features for the product owner’s acceptance (fingers crossed).Day Four. Applause in Friday’s daily scrum as the first few accepted stories are moved to done. We sometimes hold back on completing all the definition of done activities until the end of the sprint so that developers can get working on another story and let the testers start testing as early as possible.Day Five. Monday doesn’t have any scrum events so it’s a solid development day. I’d love to say we’re halfway through the sprint backlog when we’re halfway through the sprint, but we’re often still playing catch up.Day Six. On Tuesday morning, some of the developers have finished all the stories they forecast they would complete. They help other developers complete their stories, work on spikes, chores and bugs. We can bring stories in from the product backlog, but only if the development team agrees that we can get the story developed and tested before the end of the sprint.Day Seven. Our aim is to be dev complete on all story cards by the end of the day on Wednesday so that our testers have sufficient time to test all our stories and have them accepted by the end of the sprint.Day Eight. We’re helping the testers by responding to feedback. We don’t track bugs reported by the testers or product owner. Instead, we just fix them on the spot. Unless they are low priority and we don’t want to fix them in this sprint, or they were reported by someone outside the scrum team. If there aren’t any bugs, then we’re finishing definition of done activities and working on spikes and chores. We’re helping our devops engineer automate all our deployment tasks. We don’t want to have any manual deployment steps. So we automate everything using Atlassian Bamboo and Octopus Deploy. We also have another storytime workshop to elaborate and esitmate stories for a future sprint on Thursday afternoon.Day Nine. Thank goodness it’s Friday. There aren’t any sprint events today. We might run an ad-hoc design workshop on Friday morning to Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#25. Neil is attempting a little experiment with a short, single question episode on the Amazing Applications podcast and on Youtube. Let’s see if he can answer your questions about Scrum for Dynamics 365 in ten minutes or less.The question in this episode is from Ruan Kilian, a Dynamics 365 developer in Brisbane, Australia. Ruan asks,“Is it acceptable for a developer to prepare and write down the answers to the three questions and read them out at the daily scrum?”Listen in or watch the episode to find out why Neil think it’s perfectly acceptable but could be dangerous.If you’d like to ask me Neil question about Scrum for Microsoft Business Applications, click on the Send Voicemail widget on Customery.com or send a video to [email protected] the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#24. Neil covers his top 10 antipatterns for Scrum roles in Dynamics 365 projects. An antipattern looks like a good idea to a situation you were facing but wasn’t the best option when you look back on it. Antipatterns are traps that we want to help others avoid. Here are Neil's top ten antipatterns for Scrum roles: Uncommitted product owner. If your senior project stakeholder is too senior, they usually won’t have the availability required to be a committed product owner. Find someone in the next level of the organisation and backfill their job so they can be a full-time product owner for your Dynamics 365 project. Committee of product owners. This antipattern often occurs when we’re implementing Microsoft Business Applications across several divisions. Don’t settle for a committee of product owners from the different divisions. Find one single product owner they can all trust. Otherwise you’ll get pulled in lots of directions. Overdriving product owner. Often product owners with a background in sales leadership use motivation techniques, such as setting stretch targets, that often don’t work with developers. Use their enthusiasm, vision and communications skills, but watch out for them becoming a backlog troll. Learn-as-you-go product owner. Most product owners in a Dynamics 365 project have never been a product owner before might never have worked on a project before. For the sake of your team, your users and your organisation you deserve product owner training, to read widely about product ownership and to work closely with your scrum master for coaching on the product owner responsibilities. Part-time scrum master. World-class sports teams don’t expect one of the players to coach the team. Great scrum masters might be able to coach two, possibly even three teams, but it’s a full-time role that shouldn’t be handed to one of your developers. Combined product owner and scrum master. The goals of the product owner and scrum master can occasional come into conflict. If the product owner wants to push the team hard to meet a release deadline but the scrum master wants to preserve a sustainable pace. Keep the roles separate to balance that natural tension and avoid a conflict of interest. Scrum monster. Every scrum master is familiar with the rules in the Scrum guide. And they’re familiar with agile software development technical practices. Great scrum masters know when to bend the rules, and how to make the most of situations when your team can’t follow the rules. Rookie scrum master. It can be hard for a lot of project managers to transition into the scrum master role. It requires a mindset sift into an agile way of thinking, and Neil recommends that project managers spend a year working in a scrum team before trying to coach the team as a scrum master. Sharing developers between projects. Sharing a developer between projects can appear to maximise their productivity, but it can drag down the throughput of the teams relying on that developer. If you can’t dedicate a developer to your Dynamics 365 project, then make mutually agreed commitments about when they will be available so that you can determine your capacitSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#23. Neil and Dermot discuss when Microsoft Dynamics customers and partners should consider hiring a scrum master or agile coach for their project.What is an agile coach and how is this role different from a scrum master?A scrum master is a coach for the development team, the product owner and the organisation. Dermot reckons a scrum master can coach up to three teams.An agile coach focuses on coaching the organisation. The growth and agile mindset of the leadership team and the organisation’s digital transformation. An agile coach is familiar with many agile frameworks and tools in addition to Scrum. Some agile coaches also coach scrum masters as well as leadership teams. Dermot’s coaching both!Should Microsoft customers hire an independent scrum master or rely on their Microsoft partner to provide a scrum master for their Dynamics 365 project?Dermot’s advice is that smaller customers embarking on a single project should engage a Microsoft partner with a good scrum master, but if the Dynamics project is part of a broader digital transformation programme then an independent agile coach is a good investment.Should Microsoft customers hire an independent product owner?After a little consideration, Neil begins to agree with Dermot that an independent product owner can when the person is trusted by the client, knows the organisation well, and is given some time to ‘bed in’ to the project.Can Microsoft partners send their project managers to a Scrum training course and ask them to become a scrum masters on their next project?It’s a loaded question for Dermot! It’s tough for project managers to become scrum masters on their first Scrum project. The project manager won’t have a mentor to help them adopt Scrum. This will leave the project manager, the scrum team and the client short-changed.Neil partnered with another Microsoft partner organisation, CIBER UK, on his first Scrum project and they provided an experienced scrum master, Paul Fox, to coach the team through their first scrum project. Investing in outside help through your first Scrum project was a worthwhile idea.Having the get-up-and-go to just try Scrum without any coaching is risky but it can work. Nick Doelman is an example of a Dynamics 365 expert whose teams adopted Scrum without hiring an experienced scrum master to coach them through their first Scrum projects.What are the characteristics you should look for when hiring an agile coach or scrum master?Dermot asks scrum masters situational questions about examples of how to handle difficult team members, when they’ve displayed servant leadership, how they’ve helped product owners prioritise their epics, what metrics they track and what they do with those metrics.He’d ask agile coaches what’s the difference between an agile coach and a scrum master. What examples do they have of leading digital transformation programmes, how they have uplifted the capabilities of agile teams, and what agile frameworks they are familiar with and how they’ve leveraged them. And what other coaches do they follow and how do they keep their own experience up-to-date?Neil has seen scrum master candidates asked to facilitate a retrospective without eSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#22. Some ideas turn out to be great ideas. Some ideas look like great ideas at the time but don't turn out so well in hindsight. Those are antipatterns.A pattern is a repeatable idea that solves a common problem, and should be adopted by others. An antipattern seems like an answer to a problem, but turns out badly and should be avoided by others.There are hundreds of Scrum antipatterns you’ll encounter as you embrace Scrum in your Dynamics 365 projects. In this episode, Neil highlights the top ten Scrum event antipatterns that he's witnessed in Dynamics 365 projects.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#21. Mark Christie, who specialises in Dynamics 365 for Field Service at eBECS, uses Azure DevOps (formerly known as Visual Studio Team Services). He’s from Perth, the ancient capital of Scotland. On 25 January he’ll be celebrating Burns Night where the haggis is introduced to the table with bagpipes. Dynamics 365 Saturday Scotland runs on Friday 25 and Saturday 26 January, and its speakers will also be piped into the room.Azure DevOps combines planning tools such as backlogs and boards, with development tools like source control and testing with operations features to help you compile and deploy your applications.Neil is enjoying the forecasting feature of Azure DevOps which helps you see how long a project might take given a set of product backlog items and estimated team velocity.Mark enjoys building Azure DevOps dashboards and that although it’s a large suite, users can use a single app, like testing, within Azure DevOps without knowing the other parts of it.Azure DevOps is free for small project teams up to five users. Paid plans start at US$30 per month for 10 users to $750 per month for 100 users. Visual Studio subscribers are free. Microsoft partners can choose whether to provide their own instance of Azure DevOps and invite their customers to join, or whether to join their customer’s instance of Azure DevOps.When they recorded this episode, neither Mark nor Neil knew there was an on-premise option of Azure DevOps available. There is. It’s called Azure DevOps Server 2019 and it’s the successor to Team Foundation Server.Mark outlines how he manages his product back in Azure DevOps. Mark uses tasks to manage the work required to complete user stories in his backlog whereas Neil doesn’t.Mark also reveals a cunning track: using hashtags to label items even more quickly than using the label feature.Mark and Neil share the different statuses they use to track how items move across their Scrum boards.Mark’s co-worker, Richard Harding, gets credit for how Mark’s team are using the Azure DevOps wiki feature to help stakeholders learn how to use Dynamics 365’s features.Finally, if you think Scotsmen are famous for being frugal with their money, Mark will pay you £1.25 for a $1 note.Mark’s blog: TheMarkChristie.co.ukMark’s LinkedIn profile: Mark ChristieMark’s Twitter page: TheMarkChristieSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#20. Seth Bacon and Neil catch up to discuss Scrum in the public sector.You can connect with Seth Bacon on LinkedIn and @SethTBacon on Twitter. Check out Seth’s blog/vlog, The Bacon Bytes, for Dynamics 365 administrators.Seth’s having success implementing Dynamics 365 in city, county and state organisations in health and human services.Seth and Neil discuss how to sell agile projects in public sector organisations, how to handle fixed-price, fixed-scope, fixed-timeline contracts and projects by encouraging the customer’s product owner to take control of prioritising the project scope and adopting an agile mindset.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#19. We’re on a mission to ensure every Microsoft customer and partner successfully implements Dynamics 365 using the Scrum framework.Do you have a question for the Scrum Dynamics podcast? Visit Customery.com and click on the Send Voicemail button to have your question feature on the show.Dermot and Neil discuss how to optimise Scrum teams on a Dynamics 365 project.Todd Mercer, from MD Financial Management in Ottawa Canada, asks “What to do motivate a team to operate at peak capacity for a long period of time? For enterprises that can’t afford a dedicated product owner or scrum master, what roles do you see pair up on a part-time basis?”Dermot and Neil discuss sharing the product owner, scrum master and developer roles. They also share our experience of keeping scrum teams interested and having fun on long-running projects by keeping things fun, letting them experiment, and get more involved in refining the backlog.Using the Dedicated-Time Model or Dedicated-Team Model (Scrum Field Guide by Mitch Lacey) for managing legacy systems while deploying Dynamics 365.Using a decision log to document design shifts from sprint to sprint in order to explain scope changes to your project sponsor and ask for the additional budget if you need it. Scope changes belong to the product owner, rather than the development team.Having T-shaped skills in developers and cross-functional skills in a development team to avoid resource constraints. Encouraging developers to broaden their skills and knowledge to improve the team’s overall velocity.Avoiding customisation conflicts by using a magic wand to indicate that you’re working on a commonly-used solution component. Using digital tools such as Skype or Teams and frequent conversations to keep each other up-to-date on what we’re doing.Working on very small scrum teams and large teams. Neil recounts his experience working as a one-person development team, and Dermot and Neil worked on a team with 18 people. The Scrum Guide says development teams should have 3 to 9 people, so are Dermot and Neil crazy?Should you split large teams into component teams and feature teams? Dermot is a fan of feature teams because they have the cross-functional skills to release an increment to production. Component teams can’t release their work into production, but Neil has seen a component team used successfully for systems integration work.How do you manage dependencies on resources outside your scrum team? When Dermot needs firewall changes performed by the networks team he lines up the request weeks in advance to ensure there are no blockers during his sprint when the firewall changes are needed. Neil has two of the infrastructure team embedded in his programme to help raise, route and escalate dependent requests outside of my scrum teams.Can a Dynamics team work with multiple product owners? Neil reckons they can when there is a product owner for each feature team in a scaled scrum project, but not when there is a committee of product owners. Dermot shares his experience of area and chief product owners.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#18. Neil recently presented a live session on YouTube for the Dynamics 365 Community Corner. He recorded this special version of his presentation for the podcast covering:His first Dynamics CRM project using Scrum at Premier Medical GroupHow and why he switched from Microsoft Dynamics SureStep to Scrum after publishing the functional requirements documentThe horrors of basing a project plan and statement of work on a requirements specificationThe definition of Scrum as a framework, not a prescriptive methodologyScrum is one of several agile frameworks borne from the Agile ManifestoHow to describe Scrum in five minutes covering the five events, three roles, three deliverables and its principals and valuesThe top 10 benefits of Scrum for Dynamics 365 customers and project teams 26 tips for successfully implementing Dynamics 365 using ScrumSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#17. Dermot and Neil discuss what to measure in your Dynamics 365 projects when you're using Scrum.Tracking velocity is the basic measure of progress. Velocity is the total number of story points of 'done' stories in each sprint and should be averaged over several sprints (usually 3 to 5 sprints).Using velocity within the team to plan the capacity for the next sprint, and by the product owner for forecasting the release.There's no velocity credit for partially done stories at the end of the sprint.Velocity predictability is a measure of how close the actual velocity of each sprint is to the planned velocity to track the accuracy of estimating and capacity planning within the team.Neil discusses using a sprint burn down chart for highlighting an issue with testing stories, and a release burn down chart for highlighting changes in project scope. What to include in an iteration report for managers and stakeholders. (Except for Dermot who doesn't do status reporting!)Tracking effort spent on bug fixing and setting aside a buffer when planning your sprint capacity.Tracking percentage of stories blocked within a sprint to highlight issues impeding the scrum team's progress.Remember to surround your metrics with conversations to help your team improve their performance rather than report performance to stakeholders.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#16. Dermot and Neil talk about the last two events in a sprint: the sprint review and the sprint retrospective, including:The format of sprint reviews and retrospectivesHow these events are structuredWho should attendHow to tailor them for Dynamics 365 projectsSupport the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#15. Dermot’s picked up his Professional Scrum Master II and Professional Scrum Product Owner certifications. Good timing, Dermot, because our first question was from Dick Clark at eBECS who has a client project who wants to get certified in Scrum.Neil has recorded the Scrum Guide as an audio stream on SoundCloud to help Dermot get to sleep at night, and they debate whether holding a Scrum certification or having experience is more important for scrum masters.Squads, Tribes, Chapters and Guilds. Dermot gives Neil a primer on the types of groups Scrum teams use to organise themselves as they scale. It might be called the Spotify Model, but not if you ask Spotify.Joel Lindstrom drops in to admit his Scrum teams have a problem right-sizing stories to fit within a sprint. The response involves splitting the epic user story into vertical slices that can still be demonstrated to the product owner at the end of each sprint even if the feature isn’t ready for release for several sprints.Dermot also provides Neil with some advice on helping his new Scrum squads define their definition of ready, definition of done and social contract at the beginning of a new Dynamics 365 project.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil

#14. Neil provides a behind-the-scenes peek into ‘Orientation Week’ in his Dynamics 365 project kicking off this week, the Jupiter Programme.Orientation Week (O-Week) is designed to onboard two Scrum teams so that they can start delivering the Dynamics 365 workstream of an enterprise programme as quickly as possible. I talk through some of the planned O-Week activities and provide my assessment of some of the project’s risks and strengths.What are your experiences of launching new Dynamics 365 projects? Get involved in the discussion in the Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps group on LinkedIn.Support the showCONNECT🌏 Amazing Apps website🟦 Customery on LinkedIn🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep experimenting 🧪-Neil