#10. Neil compares the to-do list on his 100-year old house to the product backlog and goes on to describe:

• Using epics to capture your project scope
• Getting your product backlog started
• Estimating backlog items using story points and not t-shirt sizes or ideal days
• User stories, spikes, chores and bugs
• The product backlog in sprint planning and sprint reviews
• Refining the product backlog in storytime workshops
• Managing the backlog in Atlassian JIRA or Visual Studio Team Services.

CONNECT
🌏 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

#9. Neil is joined by Nick Doelman (@ReadyXRM) who shares his experience learning Scrum and applying it to one of his recent Dynamics 365 projects.

During the episode we cover:

• Nick’s background in Dynamics 365 since CRM 1.0 beta
• Some of his recent projects for a community organisation organising summer camps, classic car auctioneer, certification portal for a company in the mining industry, a telecommunications company in the Caribbean, a reinsurance company, and others
• Before starting a large Dynamics 365 implementation, Nick got started with Scrum by taking some online training courses
• Using the Scrum Framework on Pluralsight
•  Introduction to Scrum for Dynamics 365 by Neil Benson
• Using planning poker for team estimation of product backlog items
• Finding unicorns and sunshine in the sprint retrospective
• Daily scrums as camaraderie-building check-in for remote teams
• The possibility of using pair programming and other technical practices in Scrum projects
• Using Visual Studio Team Services features such as tags in Scrum projects
• Nick will be presenting three sessions at D365UG Summit in Phoenix in October

Remember to download the Scrum Terms Worksheet for a handy guide to all the Scrum terms you hear in this episode.

CONNECT
🌏 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

#8. Dermot and Neil answer questions submitted by podcast listeners about:

1. Estimating chores to reduce technical debt (Todd Mercer).
2. Prioritizing items with dependencies and the principle of emergent design (Alan Rachid).
3. Whether business analysts are part of the development team or not (Greta Sharples).
4. Planning agile projects, especially in the sales cycle (Jeffry van de Vuurst).

You can submit your questions by tweeting @customery or clicking on the Send Voicemail button anywhere on the Customery website.

CONNECT
🌏 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

#7. Dermot and Neil discuss sprints and the daily scrum events in a Scrum project. 

• What's the ideal sprint length when you're using Scrum on a Dynamics 365 project?
• When is it a good idea to use special sprints like Sprint 0 or a hardening sprint?
• Can you cancel a sprint?
• What's the purpose of the daily scrum?
• How can we run the daily scrum with remote teams?

CONNECT
🌏 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

#6. Neil and Dermot discuss the development team in a Scrum project implementing Dynamics 365.

Covered in this show:

• The role of the development team in a Scrum project
• What it means to be cross-functional and self-organizing
• How many developers should be in your dev team

CONNECT
🌏 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

#5. This episode of Scrum Dynamics is brought to you live from the Dynamics 365 User Group Summit EMEA in Dublin, Ireland. In this session, Neil covers the basics of Scrum and best practices for each of Scrum’s roles, events, and deliverables from his Dynamics 365 and CRM projects over the last ten years. He also highlights the lessons learned from his first Scrum for Dynamics CRM project at Premier Medical Group.

CONNECT
🌏 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

#4. Neil and Dermot discuss the role of the scrum master in a Dynamics 365 project.

• A servant leader
• Is the scrum master a project manager?
• The role of the scrum master in sprint events
• The three questions a scrum master asks during daily standup
• Project planning
• Reviews and retrospectives
• Do Dynamics 365 scrum masters need to be Microsoft certified?
• Can scrum masters have other scrum team roles such as product owner or developer?
• What are the characteristics of a good scrum master
• Techniques that a scrum master should know
• Can a client provide their own scrum master when the dev team is from a Microsoft partner?

Remember to download the Scrum Terms Worksheet for a handy guide to all the Scrum terms you hear in this episode.

CONNECT
🌏 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

#3. Neil introduces the role of the Product Owner in Dynamics 365 projects, including:

• The primary responsibility of the Product Owner
• Five ways the Product Owner manages the Product Backlog
• Characteristics of great Product Owners
• How a Product Owner spends their time
• How to use Proxy Product Owners
• Top ten tips for Product Owners
• Where do Product Owners come from?

Remember to download the Scrum Terms cheat sheet for a handy guide to all the Scrum terms you hear in this episode.

CONNECT
🌏 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

#2. Neil and Dermot introduce the Scrum framework’s events, roles, deliverables and the Scrum theory.

We cover:

• Sprints, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective events
• Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team roles
• Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog and Product Increment deliverables
• Empirical process control, and the pillars and principles of the Scrum theory

Download the Scrum Terms cheat sheet to go along with this episode for a handy guide to all the Scrum terms you’ll hear in this show.

#Scrum

CONNECT
🌏 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

#1. This is the premiere episode of the Scrum Dynamics podcast with Neil Benson and Dermot Ryan. If you have heard of Scrum or would like to use it in one of your Microsoft Dynamics 365 projects, you’re in the right spot.

• What is Agile
• What is Scrum
• Using Scrum for packaged software vs custom development
• Scrum vs Waterfall
• Soft skill benefits of Scrum
• Sustainable delivery
• The role that management plays in Scrum
• Budgeting for a Scrum project

CONNECT
🌏 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