Training for the whole team is recommended; this should include coverage of the Agile fundamentals, as well as the basics of setting up-and-running a Scrum. The intention is to provide broad understanding, allow our team to discuss the approach upfront, and have everyone start with the same foundation.
Ideally, this will be carried out by our Agile coach or Scrum Master, an experienced Scrum practitioner who has completed either the Certified Scrum Master (scrumalliance.org) or Professional Scrum Master (scrum.org) course, and who preferably has experience of coaching other teams through their adoption of Scrum.
Recommended training would include the following:
- An experiential introduction: The Paper Plane Factory is a great introduction to iterative working. It teaches the basic concepts of Scrum in a 1-hour activity (plus 30 minutes to debrief).
- Agile fundamentals: This includes The Agile Manifesto and why Agile is a mindset, not a method.
- The Agile landscape: An opportunity to discuss what options, regarding tools and practices, are available to an Agile practitioner. This will include considering what other Agile practitioners are doing in the field.
The Certified Scrum Master course is a 2-day course taught by Certified Scrum Trainers. It is part theory and part experiential, so it will give you grounding in the Agile fundamentals, as well as hands-on experience of forming your first backlog, creating a Scrum board, and role-playing through an entire, short Sprint, including Daily Scrums, a Sprint Review, and a Sprint Retrospective. It may seem over the top to be training everyone as Scrum Masters, but the investment is relatively small compared to the return you'll receive from a high-performing software team, and the CSM course is one of the best introductions to Scrum there is. If this is a route you decide to go down, the quality of training is only ever as good as the trainer, so it is worth seeking recommendations for trainers before you commit.