Don’t Assume Anything. Ever.

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Welcome back to another week at www.implementingscrum.com.

I want to take a quick opportunity to say a sincere apology for skipping a week of a new comic strip and blog entry. Excuses aside, my machine died and well…. live and learn. Inspect and adapt.

So you see a “new” look and feel the the blog entry today. Once my machine gets back from the shop, the blog will be fully integrated into the “real” site — for now, stick with me and realize this has to be “good enough” for now. At least I can communicate information with you!

I do not know if you have noticed, but the past entries in the blog have focused a lot on the word “and” instead of “but.”

Think how easy it is to always say, “Yeah… but….”.

Heck, I did it in the sentence above the last one and people probably did not even notice it.

Wow.

Old habits can be hard to break.

So.

Remember that Scrum has to do with the, “Art of the Possible.” Ken and others always remind us that we should continually look for something called “positive intent” in all interactions we have.

This is hard to do.

In business.

And.

In life in general.

This is something I must continually work on.

Daily.

Or even every hour or minute (smile).

One of the exercises I do in the ScrumMaster Workshop to help people always look for positive intent is something like the following:

“Let’s plan a party for after the session tonight.”

I need two volunteers.

One person starts the plan with an idea.

The other person then says “Yes, but….” (negative stuff)This continues and people struggle for a while.

Then.

We switch to…

One person starts the plan with an idea.

The other person then says “Yes, and….” (Build on it kind of stuff)

This continues and people actually get excited.Of course, the exercise can (and usually does) go off into wild directions.

But.

Oops. I mean…And.

It gives people a point of reference to NOT say “but” anymore.

And then I usually get called on saying “Yes, but” if I slip up in the rest of class.

This is something you can try with your Scrum Teams — either in a retrospective or some other point in time.

It may seem silly.

It works though.

Gotta run….Please send comments, questions, criticisms, ideas, or whatever here.

You can also enter The Scrum Community to discuss this entry and other Scrum topics. Thank you!

Originally Published:
August 21, 2007