The cartoon strip above really points out one of the silliest requests I — as a Practicing ScrumMaster and Trainer — hear from both prospective and current clients.
They want a “cookbook” approach to rolling out Scrum.
Think about other processes (or frameworks or methodologies or whatever) that have attempted to go down this road. In the end, it wound up being a way for people to ultimately put up even more barriers between the goal of communication — people talking.
[related TANGENT ON]
I am not saying documentation is bad.
No no no.
One of the things when working with people is to make sure that whatever documentation is created during a project ultimately has a person who reads it.
Not a role.
Not a resource.
And not some actor on an organizational chart.A person. Someone with a pulse would be best.
Then… and here is a mind-blowing concept for many people….
I coach people who create documentation to go an speak with the person consuming that information. You may be surprised at the results. Really. That wonderful forty page template that has been passed down from some consulting group (possibly generations ago!) may not really be what a person needs to do their job anymore. Maybe, when speaking with that person, you will find out they need a paragraph and some bullet points.
Good enough. Now move on.
Think about documentation this way — when was the last time you actually trusted some “system documentation” for something in production (even if YOU were the author!)?
[TANGENT OFF]
Hear Yee! Hear Yee! There is NO cookbook for Scrum.
There. I said it.
Now listen to me. Really. Stop looking for the ultimate answer (did we not find out it was “42″ from one of the Douglas Adams books anyway)?
Hmmm. Maybe if you are looking for the Scrum cookbook, I could sell you a lot of pages and ultimately wind up with “42″ as an answer. Wow. The possibilities are endless.
Not.
Listen. Especially you Chickens out there. Those people would include middle managers and all the way up the chain of command to the CxO level.
In the past, you may have been rewarded for acting like the Chicken in the comic strip this week. Command and control, autocratic, and fear mongering may have gotten you where you are today. (Is this your manager — or worse — you??). It’s OK… let it go. It is the past. You may have needed to do this in order to survive in the corporate culture bla bla bla.
Congratulations.
Now, if you are serious about implementing Scrum at your location moving forward….
Forget everything you have been taught. Forget about everything you have done to teams in the past.
Really.
Move on.
Welcome to 2006 [ok 2007... 2008... wow!] …. we are not in 1886 or 1996 anymore.
Scrum comes down to people talking and listening to each other.
Not rocket science.
Good enough for today? If you need specific recommendations on stuff to read — which I can promise will not be cookbooks — please feel free to contact me anytime. I am an avid reader and most of the stuff I look at has nothing to do with software development. And is applicable to what I do for a living.
Stay well…
Gotta run…
Please send comments, questions, criticisms, ideas, or whatever here. You can also enter The Scrum Community to discuss this cartoon and other Scrum topics. Thank you!
I hope all has been well with you since the last comic has been published. An entire week. Wow… how time flies.
In addition to a weekly strip, I am now trying to add on to the existing content on the site throughout the week. Also, there will be some cool and interesting stuff coming in 2007.
Now, for the current cartoon strip. This saying, “Lipstick on a Pig,” is something that I have heard around the IT industry since the early ninety’s (and that statement is probably older than my grandfather (may the both RIP)).
The basic premise — for those unfamiliar with it — is that people try sometimes to repackage old stuff to make it look new again.
I am pretty sure that nobody worth his or her skin in the professional agile community will tell you this stuff is anything new.
However….
What is “new” about this is the simplicity that Scrum offers. And, how easy is is to apply.
With that power comes the ease of circumventing the basic rules and principles.
This is what I’d like to address with you today, and to ask that you help me spread the word to try and help people stop applying lipstick to a pig. What do I mean by this?
In my dealings with clients today, I see a lot of implementations of what people call Scrum. A lot of it is screwy hacking. Sigh.
I get asked a lot if I have ever seen “ideal” Scrum in any environment.
The easy answer is “Yes.”
Now, with that said….
I see more “custom” implementations of “Scrum” than “pure” today. And this kinda worries me.
Think about Scrum being applied in an environment where there is:
No daily stand-up meetings.
No collocation.
No Product Owner.
No ScrumMaster.
No Story Cards.
No Tasks.
No Burn Down.
And this list can continue. On and On.
Uggggggggg.
And then, when people start going down this slippery slope and messing up… People starting to tell others that “Scrum” does not work in their environment.
But… In reality… and listen… They are not doing Scrum.
This is not “Mike being a zealot.” Trust me. OK, so I do this for a living… but I also know, realize, and teach people that if something is working the way it is currently being done, don’t change it.
Really. Not rocket science.
Remember, Scrum exposes the dysfunctional environment of a team / organization / enterprise early and often.
This hurts.
And is hard.
Are you doing what I described above?
Need help?
Get it. From me or others.
Or.
Continue hacking away and stop calling what you are doing “Scrum.”
Gotta run…
Please send comments, questions, criticisms, ideas, or whatever here. You can also enter The Scrum Community to discuss this cartoon and other Scrum topics. Thank you!
December 4, 2006
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