Hi all.

Sorry I have been down “hard” again for the past two days but the Apple Store has finally replaced my “fire starting” MacBook Pro with a newer version (yeah!) so I am up and running again. Updates to the site will be made tomorrow and I hope you will keep coming back for more over the next two weeks (slow part of the year for some geeks stuck at work coming up).

Hope you are having a great week.

- mike vizdos
www.implementingscrum.com
www.michaelvizdos.com

Interested in becoming a Certified Scrum Master?
Come to my next workshop!

As I wrote about yesterday, this is probably the last comic strip of 2007. Tony and I hope you enjoy it and learn from it; this is a question that comes up pretty regularly from both the readers of this blog and at client sites I visit around the world.

[Full Disclosure ON]

I have been working with Scott in one capacity or another since September 11, 2001. Scott is one of my many mentors (he is also one of my most outspoken mentors) within the agile community. While everyone may not agree with him, he has (co)-written almost twenty books on various agile topics (one was with me!) and a lot of my learning style can be seen by his acts. For that I thank him sincerely — and often.

[Full Disclosure OFF]

This is what has been posted publicly by Scott Ambler:

My December 2007 print column entitled “Scaling On-Site Customer” is now online at http://www.ddj.com/architect/204801134. It examines the challenges surrounding having a stakeholder(s) actively involved with an agile project in the role of an on-site customer or product owner. This role is hard enough for simple projects, but at scale it becomes extremely difficult. The article provides
advice from Agile Modeling for how to augment this role and address the challenges associated with it.

I’ve also blogged about this topic at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/ambler?entry=agile_stakeholders_at_scale.

- Scott

Scott W. Ambler
Practice Leader Agile Development, IBM Methods Group
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/rational/bios/ambler.html
Agility at Scale: http://www.ibm.com/rational/agile/

To read the DDJ article, you will probably have to register as a user — and they seem pretty good about not spamming you. Scott will not spam you from his other sites mentioned.

Will you agree with everything he has written?

Probably not.

Is he OK with that?

Sure.

He totally understands that people will not always agree with him.

And.

This is something I have learned from him.

It has come in handy over the years.

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

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

Interested in becoming a Certified Scrum Master?
Come to my next workshop!

Please note:

Tomorrow will most likely be the last comic strip for the end of 2007. Tony (our artist!) is planning on taking a two week hiatus between now and the new year. This is good stuff and shows he works on having a life (something we talk about a lot on here). While he is gone, I may do a little refactoring on the site and add some additional material and ideas.

If you have any ideas about the content for the remainder of this year, please contact me anytime and we can chat, email, or meet face-to-face.

I have a lot of great plans to be unveiled for 2008.

For those of you who are “stuck” doing the work thing over the upcoming holidays — spend some time surfing the net — specifically at this site and learn more about your craft and how to get better at it. Find something you like? Pass it on to your friends (they do not even need to be geeks!).

So… Tomorrow we will introduce the last comic strip of 2007.

Hope you enjoy it!

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

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

I had an interesting question posed on a forum I regularly monitor and respond; I thought it would be interesting to share the response here for the readers who sometimes do not see that I also write in other areas (smile). The entire thread can be found here.

=====

The thread began along the lines of, “How do you measure success from the Customer point of view.”

The first answer I gave did not go over well…

“How about asking the customer?”

A lot of people jumped in on this one. Many people came up with similar answers.

Then, I answered one of the replies along the lines of:

“>>I have a strong desire to make sure that whatever project I work on the customer defines success.

This is an interesting thought. Can you explain that with an example? Have you tried it before?”

This was my reply:

Hi,

Every once in a while I will throw out a statement like that just to see if people are reading my replies (smile).

Let me address your second question first, “Have you tried it before?”

Yes. I have. In fact, after doing this for a while now I will not go into a team or organization without that being defined up front and in clear English (or whatever the local language — as long as I understand it AND the customer understands it!). When I first started doing software development (even before “agile and Scrum”), I tended to not ask this question and just make a lot of assumptions about what the customer wanted. This usually got both me and the customer (if there was indeed a customer) feeling frustrated.

Example(s).

I have many, so here are a few that stick out in my mind (especially at close to three AM and I am up with insomnia)…

Example #1
—————-

The first one I just talked about on Friday with a colleague of mine where we worked on a project that is still talked about today as one of the “best” agile projects people have worked on at their organization. One of the reasons it was a success — from both the minds of the customer and the development team (which includes all the roles) was that we had an engaged Product Owner and we took the time at the beginning of each Sprint to define what “done” looked like for that individual Sprint.

Were we expected to deliver something into production each iteration (or Sprint)? No. Actually, our “first” definition of done could be considered pretty week from people “outside” the team; it was something like, “We will deliver a piece of working code.”

We did this the first Sprint. And wow. The customer was blown away. The development team got focused on delivering working software (instead of traditional waterfall artifacts — some of which have nothing to do with working code).

Did the definition of “done” evolve? Yes.

Example #2
—————–

I was asked to come into a uuber-architecture project that had been “drifting” for years. One of the reasons this was happening was there was a group (a large technical group, by the way) pushing through this large change throughout the enterprise. It seemed like everyone had a line item in their budgets to “donate” to this project (I am joking about the donation — it was a sunk cost almost every project was paying for). When I cam in, customer satisfaction was low.

I wondered why and started going out and asking the people that were paying for the projects. Ummm… I got some surprising answers. Many of them included, “Um, I am not going to use that thing” to, “Mike, it is something I inherited after the last round of reorganizations.” It was almost silly. It took me a while to find a “real” customer for this project. And oh, I found one, and asked them to be committed to the team. We (the team, the product owner, and me (playing the role of ScrumMaster on this team)) burned through three product owners in multiple iterations (or Sprints) to be able to get to the “right” one.

In the end, I think the project got killed. And, it was a good decision for the organization. Why?

And this is important to realize — if you are using Scrum and cannot identify an engaged Product Owner… do not do Scrum.

There. I said it (and have in the past).

If the customer (or Product Owner) cannot define success for the team (or to themselves)… do something different.

Hope these examples help!

More information about the topics above can be found at:

Transparency

http://www.implementingscrum.com/blog/2006/10/16/transparency-and-jessica-alba-a-scrum-connection/
http://www.implementingscrum.com/cartoons/cartoons_files/2006-11-30-Transparency.html

“Done”

http://www.implementingscrum.com/blog/2006/11/27/done-really/

Product Owner

http://www.implementingscrum.com/blog/2007/06/04/whos-your-product-owner/
http://www.implementingscrum.com/blog/2006/10/30/shock-treatment-for-your-product-owner/

Silver Bullet

http://www.implementingscrum.com/blog/2006/09/25/scrum-the-silver-bullet-not/

Thank you,

- Mike Vizdos
www.implementingscrum.com
www.michaelvizdos.com

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

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

Originally Published:
December 16, 2007

Interested in becoming a Certified Scrum Master?
Come to my next workshop!

Today, as promised, I will tell you about the debrief related to the exercise for the cartoon this week (see above and yesterday for the actual exercise and the day before for the setup of why we are doing this!).

Please read over the past two days so you get some decent context about what I am about to cover next. It is that important (smile).

After everyone is sitting down and breathing they may actually be looking at you like, “OK, Why the heck have we done this exercise?”

First question for you to think about, then I will go about explaining why we do what we do here.

So.

Why do you think this exercise is done.

Take a moment and think about that before continuing.

I will still be here!

OK. Now that you are back… let me go into how I debrief this exercise.

First, I ask people, “How did this exercise feel?”

Leave it open ended.

And.

Shut up and let someone talk.

They will. They always do. Really.

Depending on the answers, I then take them through a guided tour of the three parts, and then ask a lot of open ended questions about the purpose of each section.

One of the things I constantly work on as both a ScrumMaster and Certified Scrum Trainer is learning how to shut up and listen — and NOT answer the questions I ask. This is a constant struggle for me and something that was pointed while I was co-teaching a class about six months ago; since then I have made sure I am aware of when I do this.

Sorry for the small tangent but I think it is important for you, my reader, that this will be a constant struggle going forward (if it is not — let me know how you are handling it!).

So.

For the first section I ask the “managers” how it felt for them. And let them talk.

Then, I turn it around to the “workers” — and how it felt for them. And. Let them talk.

This starts some light bulbs going off in some of their heads. This is a good thing.

And I point out how few (mainly by asking again) how few people completed this exercise.

No matter where I do this in the world — and it is a lot of places — the results do not vary that much.

So. It is not just a “North American” or “European” or “Indian” or “Insert your country here” thing.

Cool to see in action.

Next, I ask people who “finished” the second part of the exercise.

Almost all do.

Why?

Because they were given instructions on what the end goal was, and they knew how to do it.

It is not rocket science.

And.

Think about how to apply this on your Scrum Team.

It is that easy.

The next section was introduced to me earlier this year and I have had mixed results with it — to my surprise (wow… even I can still get shocked at results LOL).

When I ask people to become “blind” (about a third of the people attending the workshop) and give them the exact same directions as part two of the exercise…. teams doing this do one of two things. They automatically help each other or they let the blind crash into things and other people.

Wow.

How true to life is this on your team today?

How can you change that going forward?

This part of the exercises is reflected upon pretty regularly throughout the remainder of the workshop. And as the days go on, people start to see what this means in their current environment.

Is this something that has opened your eyes?

Will anything change?

Who will initiate that change?

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

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

Interested in becoming a Certified Scrum Master?
Come to my next workshop!

Today, as promised, I will tell you about the exercise related to the cartoon this week (see above and yesterday for more information).

This is an exercise I normally do at a Certified ScrumMaster Workshop on the first morning of the first day; the main reason for doing this is because it drives home a lot of different points that I can then reference as the workshop continues.

It is that powerful.

And.

It is easy to do.

There are three steps to this exercise, and this is not something that I have invented alone.

Today I will talk about the three steps and tomorrow I will debrief about the different sections of what has actually occurred. This is also an example of what I do in real life (smile) with my workshops and exercises.

Step one is to break the team into “managers” (chickens) and “workers” (pigs).

They can self select. One of the first lessons with Scrum and Agile in general (smile).

This is also a good introduction to the terminology of chickens and pigs, along with their “old” versus “new” roles.

The managers are given instructions that they can only tell the worker what to do. The goal is to go sixty paces in about a minute (sometimes two depending on the number of attendees). They can tell the worker to go left, right, forward, backwards, stop, or go. They may not touch the worker.

The worker must listen to all instructions from the boss/manager without question. A pace is a regular pace and people are not allowed to skimp on any of these paces (understand?).

A few things to “prepare” for this: Setup the room beforehand with some masking tape on the floor. People are not allowed outside these boundaries. They can also (for later) represent something very important to the team — organizational constraints.

Say “start” and keep time.

One more thing (ug) — you can become a “barrier” if people are progressing too quickly. This is fun. Heh. Really.
After the time is up, have everyone stop where they are.

Most of the class does not get to sixty paces.

This is normal.

Step two in this exercise is to allow all the people to self organize and get to sixty paces.

It usually takes about thirty seconds from the time you say “start” until the time the team completes this part of the exercise.

When people are done, have them stop and raise their hands.

This third part is the beauty of the exercise and brings home some other points — of which I will write more about tomorrow. I need you to keep coming back and learning more with me!

Ask for people in the room who were born on a even day. Realistically this winds up being less than a third of the attendees.

Now.

Tell them they are blind.

And.

The team must self organize to make sure everyone goes sixty paces.

And.

Nobody can get hurt in the process.

When they are all done (keep a time limit of a minute or two again if needed), have the people sit down at their original seats.

Tomorrow I will go through the questions and answers I debrief with the attendees.

At least the beginning ones.

The lessons learned in this exercise are used throughout the remainder of the Certified ScrumMaster workshop.

Think about the questions that you may have when doing this exercise, and what, as a ScrumMaster working with a team, the implications would be.

Have a great day or evening and I will have more information tomorrow for you.

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

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

Interested in becoming a Certified Scrum Master?
Come to my next workshop!

Welcome back!

This is an exercise that has evolved over the years of me teaching the Certified ScrumMaster Workshop (by myself and with others).

First let me explain the “idea” behind this cartoon (smile).

I recently spent some time back down in Boca Raton to see my parents (and have my boys spend time with their grandparents); for those of you who have not heard of it, let’s just say its where a lot of people go to retire — what a place for me to grow up! My father told me about a new law passed in Florida — and I am not kidding — that says a dog can not be considered a “second passenger” for the HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) Lane (where vehicles with 2 or more people can drive on the highway because it is “faster” in lots of traffic).

Aneeeeway…. this brought me to a funny conclusion of, “What if the dog was a seeing eye dog?”

See the humor in it?

OK. It is pretty weak and not intended to tick off any person who is blind. Really.

The point is (finally Mike!)…. sometimes on a team you will have people that do not have a clue of what is happening around them. They do not see things that have happened in the past.

And.

This happens a lot of times when teams are either forming or add new people onto their existing Scrum Teams.

Wow.

So one of the exercises I do in the Certified ScrumMaster Workshops is the following:

WAIT.

I will post the exercise tomorrow.

Before reading the post tomorrow — THINK about what this can mean to your team, organization, and enterprise!

Wow.

More tomorrow on this.

I promise!

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

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

Interested in becoming a Certified Scrum Master?
Come to my next workshop!

Thanks for sticking with us last week. We lost a few subscribers but by the end of the week we saw a large net increase. So thank you for helping me get the word out on this site and blog.

I also got some great feedback and ideas for content in the future.

Keep it coming please.

This week we conclude the three part series on the process of hiring a new ScrumMaster.

Part one is here.
Part two is here.
Part three is below (smile).

Part one talked about what a typical HR department posts when frankly, they are clueless on what they really need. The point here is to remember to work with the people posting the positions to make it realistic to what your team is looking to hire.

Really.

Part two talked about the interviewing process. Wow. This can be complicated - for both the potential scrummaster and the team that person may be working with.

Make it fun if you can.

Notice in the comic strip this week that the chicken did not make the final call for selecting a ScrumMaster.

Who should?

The pigs (or the scrum team).

Really.

Why?

Remember this person who will be filling the role of a ScrumMaster for the team is going to be working with the team on a daily basis.

What does a certified ScrumMaster do?

It depends on the circumstance. As I was reminded in a comment from my last comic strip (see the comment at the bottom and feel free to add to it!).

Some teams may actually like and receive a ScrumMaster who professes Scrum as the Silver Bullet.

Personally… I have not seen this work effectively; however, remember that is what I have found working with the teams around the world.

Remember though… everyone is different and we need to remember situations and teams need different things depending on their — or your — needs.

The last part of this comic strip talks about the possible need for a ScrumMaster to have to sit through the class for training anyway (and no it is not just to learn the “Secret Handshake of a ScrumMaster” (sigh).

Or.

Whatever training the Organization requires.

Read that last sentence and remember it!

Sometimes it is like the Dilbert comic I think many people have seen (and sent me!) this week. More on that later I think (smile)… this posting is long enough for today!

So.

What are you going to do differently when hiring your next ScrumMaster?

Anything?

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

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