Scrum Mastery

by Geoff Watts

Geoff offers a set of questions that can be asked at every sprint review. These questions — Have priorities changed? Have any estimates changed? — are all ones I’ve asked before. But I don’t think I’ve ever asked all of them in the same review, and I’ve never thought of having a key set of questions to go over in each review.

Like Scrum itself, many of the core ideas here are simple—ensure teams have access to their product owners, let teams make decisions, know the power of silence.

what a ScrumMaster always needs are the qualities that Geoff describes in this book: Resourceful in removing impediments to productivity Enabling, helping others be effective Tactful, diplomacy personified Respected, known for integrity both within the team and in the wider organization Alternative, prepared to promote a counter-culture Inspiring, generating enthusiasm and energy in others Nurturing of both individuals and teams Empathic, sensitive to those around them Disruptive, able to shift the old status quo and help create a new way of working

have had the privilege of watching Geoff in action. He truly has a gift for connecting, and coaching without judgement or impatience. His insights and fine touch with people and teams shine through in the stories you will read in Scrum Mastery. Of course, dear reader, you will, and should, find your own path and make use of your own unique talents and gifts. With Geoff’s experiences and stories as a guide, you will see that a ScrumMaster is not master of the team, but a master at encouraging, enabling, and energizing people to gel as a team and realize their full potential.

At its core, Scrum aims to harness the power of self-organising, autonomous, engaged teams who take responsibility for delivery and collaborate directly with their customers.

A ScrumMaster is part facilitator, part coach and part coordinator. They are also part parent, part orchestra conductor and part sheepdog. And much, much more. The ScrumMaster should do whatever is needed to help the team become high performing and for the organisation to deliver excellent products quickly.

A ScrumMaster should serve the product owner, the development team and the organisation in various ways, most notably in facilitation, impediment removal and coaching.

Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t, Jim Collins [4] describes Level 5 Leaders: “Level 5 leaders look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well. at the same time, they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming bad luck when things go poorly.” These leaders are highly ambitious but not for themselves; instead, they want their organisations to excel. They build successors rather than try to set people up to fail to make themselves look good. Great ScrumMasters share the characteristics of Level 5 leaders.

Resourceful They are creative in removing impediments to productivity Enabling They are passionate about helping others be effective Tactful They are diplomacy personified Respected They have a reputation for integrity both within the team and in the wider organisation Alternative They are prepared to promote a counter-culture Inspiring They generate enthusiasm and energy in others Nurturing They enjoy helping both individuals and teams develop and grow Empathic They are sensitive to those around them Disruptive They break the old status quo and help create a new way of working

TIP: During the next retrospective, ask for feedback from the team on how you could become a better ScrumMaster. Not only will you get some great ideas for how to improve but also merely the act of asking for feedback tends to increase respect. Share your values with the team and ask them to help you keep from compromising them.

TIP: Don’t over-promise but, instead, make many small commitments and keep them. Admit and apologise, without making excuses, when you fail to keep your commitment.

second piece of advice is to go into the role of ScrumMaster with the intention of making the role of ScrumMaster for this team unnecessary.

Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”

Attempting to encourage, pressure or bribe the team into reducing the release plan will almost certainly lead to the team either consciously or sub-consciously cutting quality and introducing technical debt.

“The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.”

It turns out that patients are more likely to keep their commitments if they are actively involved in making them. The physical act of writing it had a material effect on them keeping their commitments. Cialdini attributes this to people’s desire to act consistently with their view of themselves.

The first thing Vince did was to ask the team what rules they normally have for these types of meetings, as he wanted to know how they would like to be facilitated. They responded with a number of statements including: * We start and finish on time * Everybody’s opinion should be heard * There are no stupid ideas * No electronic device distractions * Make decisions by consensus

Vince wrote the team’s stated rules on a flipchart sheet, stuck it on the wall and began the meeting. Within 30 minutes, one of the team members, Janet, got her laptop out and started going through her inbox, replying to emails. The rest of the group looked at her, looked at the sheet on the wall, back at Janet and then at Vince, as if to say, “So what are you going to do about it?” Vince considered for a moment. He was disappointed that Janet had shown disrespect to the team, the meeting, and her own commitment. He was more curious, though, as to why the rest of the team didn’t feel able to pull Janet up on her behaviour. Vince decided to ask the group about it. “Let’s pause just a moment and return to our working agreements,” he began. “Janet, I notice that you are on your computer right now. And I’ve noted a few times where one or two of you have interrupted each other. Both of these actions seem to violate the rules here on this flipchart,” Vince concluded, pointing to the paper he’d hung on the wall. “I’m sorry,” Janet said quickly, blushing as she shut her laptop. “My intention isn’t to single you out, Janet,” explained Vince. “You are not the only person who has violated the stated rules today, just the most recent. I want to ask the team a question: are these agreements truly reflective of your intended behavior? Because you are not only breaking your own rules, you are also failing to take action or hold each other accountable to them. If I weren’t here, how would...

Vince. Letting this behaviour go, even just once, would have set a precedent that the team working agreements weren’t that important.

A ScrumMaster often plays the role of conscience of the team, especially when it is in the forming or norming stages of development

Create a feedback culture Giving honest feedback to someone who has broken faith with you is not an easy thing to do. Neither is accepting critical feedback from a peer. Teams will very likely need help in learning how to hold each other to account without inciting arguments or driving wedges between team members. Scrum teams, the individuals within the teams, and the organisations they are operating in, all need to become comfortable with the process of giving and receiving feedback on a very frequent basis. We need to be open to feedback about the state of our requirements, our design decisions, our estimates, our priorities, our interactions with other team members, and, most importantly, what we have built and how we have built it. Though many organisations say they value feedback—”It’s the breakfast of champions” is a phrase I have heard many times—when it comes to it, people are either unskilled at, unprepared for, or unwilling to take good, proper, helpful feedback. Ironically, those that think they are best at giving and receiving feedback are often the worst at it. a simple model to start off with is the AID model, which I came across in Max Landsberg’s book, The TAO of Coaching [10]: Actions: What specifically is the person (or team) doing well, or poorly? Be objective where possible and focus on the behaviour not the individual(s). Impacts: What effects are these actions having? Speak from your own perspective; not, for example, “I’ve heard that...” or “People...

A ScrumMaster is much more of an enabler than a doer. ScrumMasters are there, first and foremost, to help people do what they need to do. Great ScrumMasters have a strong paternalistic streak—they enjoy helping their teams and the organisations they operate in develop and fulfil their potential. Enablers take great pleasure in watching a team who were once accustomed to being told what to do and how to do it, start to take ownership of their work and deliver exceptional results into the bargain. It’s also great to see customers take advantage of the opportunities available to them in Scrum and build extremely successful products very quickly. It’s even satisfying to facilitate a meeting in a way that fosters creativity, collaboration and commitment where previously there was tedium, tension and tacit disbelief. TheFreeDictionary.com [12] describes the verb enable as: 1. to supply with the means, knowledge, or opportunity; make able. 2. to make feasible or possible TIP: Try “battle mapping” [13] to map out both the formal and informal structures of your organisation, interactions, power relationships and spheres of influence. TIP: Find out what the team’s biggest frustrations are in their work. Choose one that you could reduce or remove to increase their effectiveness.

In order to be a great enabler of a team, a ScrumMaster will need to remove impediments at both the team and organisational level. To remove impediments, ScrumMasters need to understand (or learn) how things get done in the organisation. Knowing whose door to knock on when an issue arises or what channels are most effective in gaining traction (and resolution) is often critical to a ScrumMaster’s, and team’s, success.

New team members often benefit from pairing with different members of the team. It helps decrease their learning curve and builds relationships. When assimilating a new team member, you might also focus daily scrum updates on a product backlog item at a time rather than one person at a time, thus reducing the focus on any one member and increasing the focus on the work.

A good ScrumMaster will ensure the team have access to a product owner. A great ScrumMaster will ensure the team have access to the product owner.

Great ScrumMasters know that ultimately they need to do whatever it takes not to function as a go-between. Instead they should aim to bring the team and product owner together so that they work hand-in-hand

A good ScrumMaster helps the team develop and grow. A great ScrumMaster helps the team develop their own growth pathway.

Some teams found measuring themselves against the agile manifesto values to be really effective, some teams found the twelve agile principles to be better for them, while other teams created their own values, principles and behaviours to measure themselves. One team simply used the “awesomeness factor” and asked themselves, “What do we need to do to be the most awesome team in the company—the one that everyone wants to work for and every product owner wants working for them?”

TIP Note signs of progress, even if they are little things like “John felt able to join in the retrospective” or “People are looking at each other in the daily scrum rather than their feet” or “Dave offered to help Arush today without anyone prompting him.” These small details may get lost in the bigger picture but can serve as energy reserves when things don’t seem to be progressing as fast as you would like.

In the early stages of team development, ScrumMasters should help establish trust and safety for the team. Jean Tabaka suggests that collaborative leaders “take away the blame” by helping shift conversations away from finding blame towards finding solutions and, if necessary, shouldering any blame yourself. By doing this “the team learns that taking ownership is possible without suffering the destruction of blame.”

Establishing some explicit rules for the formal meetings, such as “nothing said here leaves this room”, can also help foster a more transparent environment. Try starting the daily scrum (or retrospective) with a short confessions session, where everyone (even neutral observers) shares a short example of something they screwed up. This can increase the shared level of vulnerability and the sense that not everything always goes to plan.

Creating a process of gradual exposure is also a common pattern that great ScrumMasters tend to follow. Daily scrums and retrospectives start off as behind-closed-doors or off-site meetings. As the team grows comfortable with each other, they can extend an invitation to the product owner — perhaps for a safe meeting first — and, then gradually for meetings where the team has a higher risk of exposure. I would recommend an element of ...

Remember that while protecting the team by excluding disruptive influences may be a good short-term strategy, great ScrumMasters work towards a more inclusive and transparent process. Eventually your team should reach a point where the product owner — as well as any other stakeholder — is included in team meetings, such as the daily scrum.

A good ScrumMaster will help a team change their sprint length to find their optimum. A great ScrumMaster has faith in self-organisation and knows the value of rhythm

Cyril Northcote Parkinson once said that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion” and this has been hailed as a humorous truism ever since.

A good ScrumMaster will say what needs to be said. A great ScrumMaster knows the power of silence.

Great ScrumMasters are proactive, pioneering and they hate monotony. They typically adopt the attitude that things are possible no matter how difficult they may appear and are constantly looking for new ways to engage their team and to inspire curiosity and energy in their team.

When considering how to solve a problem, resourceful ScrumMasters challenge all of their assumptions about an impediment. They will ask themselves questions such as: • Do I really have to speak to that person about it? • Do we even need to remove this impediment? • If I had to explain this problem to my son/daughter/niece/nephew, how would I explain it? What would they suggest?

Many resourceful ScrumMasters broaden their perspectives and find new solutions by imagining what would make a pro...

TIP: Search out ScrumMasters from other organisations – ideally those that are the most different from yours and share experiences. User groups are a good start but great ScrumMasters usually establish more focused relationships such as ScrumMaster circles. These circles are usually no larger than six people who meet up either face-to-face or virtually on a regular basis to discuss their latest challenges or thoughts. Perhaps you could even try a ScrumMaster exchange program—swap a ScrumMaster with another company for a retrospective, or even a whole sprint?

A good ScrumMaster creates an environment where raising impediments can occur. A great ScrumMaster creates an environment where creativity can occur.

So write Sam Laing & Karen Greaves, of Growing Agile in South Africa. They blogged [23] about how they turned their admin time into fun time by playing “four in a row” (or Connect 4 as we call it in the UK), with sticky notes denoting their admin tasks. They tell of how once they turned their tasks into a game, they got distracted less often, were more focussed and, as a result, probably doubled productivity in their least favourite aspect of work...and had fun!

Another great technique for practicing creativity is the improv game of “Delight” [24]. In the game of Delight it is your job to tell someone else’s story. Your partner (whose story you are telling) cannot speak except to say “no” to the bits of the story that they don’t agree with. The storyteller then must react to this “rejection” by trying something else to make their partner happy with the story. It seems so simple...and it is great fun.

Another way to leverage the team’s collective genius and encourage them to solve problems themselves in the future is to include them in the brain- storming process by asking them a powerful question or two, such as: “How would you like it to be?” “If you were me what would you do first?” “What would be your backup plan?” “If there were absolutely no constraints, what would you do?” “How could we make this fun or, at least, bearable?” “What assumptions do we have that might not be true?”

A good ScrumMaster ensures team members share their status efficiently with one another in the daily scrum. A great ScrumMaster ensures the daily scrum is an energising event that teams look forward to.

“I’ve noticed a lack of energy in these meetings recently and thought I would try and shake things up a little,” Harvey began. “The aim remains the same: for everyone to get a feel for where we are as a team and what we need to focus on today, and the rest of the sprint. However, just because the meeting has a prescribed format, doesn’t mean we can’t change it up a little.” “The first thing we are going to do is focus on the cards rather than the people,” he continued. “Rather than go round from person to person, we will go through the sprint backlog from card to card and get a feel for progress that way. It might not work but it could give us a different perspective on things.” “The next thing I want us to use is this toy bomb from one of my kids’ games. It goes off at a random time. We’ll pass it to whoever is speaking. Then, whoever is holding it when it goes off will have a consequence to face. But that doesn’t mean you can just throw it to the next person too quickly; if the team feel they need more information from you, then you will have to take the bomb back.” A couple of the team giggled at the somewhat juvenile approach but most of them seemed keen to give it a go. One of them picked the first card from the task board and began talking, passing the bomb from person to person as they all added their input to the status of the cards. When Don came in, he was immediately thrown the bomb and asked if he wanted to add anything to the current discussion. “What? What’s ...

efficiency can lead to monotony if you aren’t careful. Answering the same questions with the same people at the same time every day can become a little tedious. So the best ScrumMasters have all found interesting ways to “sex up” their teams’ daily scrums. The ideas that Harvey came up with in the story — moving from card to card instead of person to person, and using a toy bomb to add a bit of fun and remind people to be concise—are just two of many techniques that will liven up the daily scrum: • Have individual countdown timers. • Use a “bored” buzzer that anyone in the team can hit if they feel it’s getting boring. • Start the meeting with a joke, a “guess the song from the lyric”, or a “guess the movie from the quote” competition. • Begin the meeting with a trivia question and keep score throughout the sprint, or start with a fun fact about a member of the team. • Introduce food or drink, e.g. pastries, fruit, or coffee. • Give your update in the style of someone else (perhaps another member of the team, or a famous person). Maybe award a point for the person who can guess who you are impersonating? • Draw your updates in a Pictionary style. • Change the time of the daily scrum. Some teams find that having their daily scrum at the end of the day is a nice way to close out the day (especially if people all start at different times). Plus, they don’t then have to remember what they did yesterday and they all know what they are picking up when they come in the next morni...

An example Bullshit Bingo card from the Wizard Sleeves team

A good ScrumMaster helps the team identify improvements. A great ScrumMaster inspires the team to be adaptive.

Retrospectives are a crucial part of the agile approach. No iteration can ever be completely perfect and no iteration can ever be an unmitigated failure. Understanding this is integral to the inspect and adapt process of Scrum and other agile methods.