Consulting Services Available From Sterling Barton

Item	Description	Value Proposition
Scrum team coaching	ScrumMaster roles and responsibilities Delivery Team Roles Working agreements Definition of Done Tracking and Reporting Velocity Communities of Practice Sprint Planning Sprinting as cross-functional, self organizing teams Sprint Reviews Team Retrospectives Help teams work effectively with high transparency and self-reliance. Able to commit to good Sprint plans and deliver predictably Knows how to escalate issues quickly Works on self-improvement as part of the day-to-day job
Roles of the Product Owner	Product Vision and Roadmap Multi-Level Planning Product Backlog(s) User Stories and Acceptance Criteria Agile Release Planning	A good Product Owner ensures the organization builds the right thing Understands how to take advantage of knowledge creation to help sustain high levels of innovation with the team
Product Backlog Grooming	How Product Owner and the teams’ help each other Review Product Backlog Prioritization Acceptance Criteria Product Backlog Estimating	Strikes a balance with big up front requirements phases and thrashing from lack of enabling specifications for the team
Transition team and management coaching	Changing Roles of Management Scaling Agile to multiple coordinated teams Organizational Impediment Management Transparency Establish and review impediment backlog Servant Leadership Establish baseline organization goals and measures Organizational Metrics and Reporting Communities of Practice Agile Planning using adaptive techniques Balancing strategy and execution Solve the most important problems first Integrated planning Reacting soon enough Employee satisfaction, training and career pathing
Team tune-ups	Teams sometimes taper off or lose focus on self-improvement. Also, conflict sometimes causes enmity amongst the group. Often evidenced by teams not completing what they sign up for, saw tooth velocities, quality issues and lack of transparency into the organization. Indicators can also be in the form of complaints such as claims of micro-management (though this may be an organizational problem that is true)	Re-focus on delivery Provide new and fresh techniques Help address major impediments Help communicate impediments Provide intensive retrospectives
Managing and integrating multiple Product Backlogs	Organizations are challenged with having Product Backlogs ready at all times. This is a new kind of way the business interacts with the delivery teams. It is especially difficult when organizations develop separate Product Backlogs that are related to each other	Increased velocity More cohesive view of the product line Less re-work and delay More effective planning
Scaling to Multiple Teams	When multiple teams need to coordinate on a single release, communication for parallel efforts must be efficient Scrum of Scrums sounds easy and isn’t	Organizational transparency increased Impediments addressed at correct levels in organization
Facilitated Multi-Team Release Planning	As teams establish evidence of delivery from velocity with a known state of quality, longer-range planning helps validate roadmaps	One of the best ways to achieve a cohesive view of a product effort Shared understanding among business and technical teams promotes more effective working styles
Coordinating Business activities with software delivery	Complex software development is a complex system. Adaptive planning helps the organization respond to new information quickly	Adaptive planning techniques Multi-level planning
Automated Unit Testing and Acceptance Testing	Provide more code coverage so code can be regressed and debugged quickly	Create robust unit tests that do not constantly break as more features are developed. Build on to these with smaller numbers of automated acceptance tests makes test automation cost effective
Continuous Integration Environments	Parallel development is integrated quickly so code is always in a known state. Reduces configuration management complexity because fewer branches are required	Being integrated and running suites of automated tests minimizes software debt and makes teams more predictable and thus helps business plan more effectively
Test Driven Design and Development	Requires a mindset shift. In danger of becoming a buzzword. Writing failing tests first before the code is written aids in analysis, design, development and test. Helps reduce gold-plating while preserving innovation opportunities.	Results in executable documentation Design and analysis integrated so integrity increases
Managing Software Debt	Understanding what different types of debt and how to manage eludes many organizations	Provide tools and approaches to reducing and managing debt
“Push-Button Release”	Releases are often difficult and expensive. Creating the ability to promote deployments through all the different environments minimizes the cost and “environmental anomalies” by removing manual interventions.	Reduce cost of releases Reduce time of releases Can integrate into release trains with less “pain.”
Technical Assessments	At times organizations need to have an independent assessment of their software assets. This usually includes a scorecard and guidance for addressing any issues uncovered.	Independent assessment of system quality, corresponding processes and ability to maintain current productivity levels