One of the things I stories I have recently started talking about in my Certified ScrumMaster Workhops is about how Scrum really amplifies both the functional and dysfunctional aspects of an organization.
And the story I tell is that of an older movie called, “Spinal Tap.”
Ever hear of it?
If not, it is a “Rock-U-Mentary” about a fake band who gets followed around by a camera crew.
Ask anyone in your office about the “11″ line and have them do it in their best accent (they will know what you are talking about if they have seen the movie).
The main gist of that line is that during an interview, one of the band members asks why their amplifiers have an “11″ on them, instead of just the normal “10.”
Blank stare.
Then…. the band member says, “Because 11 is louder.”
And then the interviewer basically asks, “Why not just make 10 louder?”
Blank stare.
Band member, “Well, because this one’s got an eleven.”
So I may have screwed it up since it has been almost 25+ years since seeing the movie (I think… yikes!).
I have heard it is best watched in some kind of altered state; however, I would not condone or recommend that to anyone reading this article.
So what does an amplifier with an “11″ have to do with Scrum and introducing it into an organization?
Comments here are welcome again, as it seemed to spark some great discussions last week (scroll down to the bottom to see all the comments people have left… wow!) …. (of which I really need to go back and answer if appropriate)!
Here are my questions, but you can answer them (or your own) any way you’d like (It’s almost like being a moderator for the US Presidential and Vice Presidential Debates this year sigh):
1) What are the top five GREAT things that have been amplified in your organization when introducing Scrum?
2) What are the top five INSANE things (read: Dysfunctions) that have been amplified when introducing Scrum?
3) Was Scrum the cause of them?
4) Did Scrum force a change one way or the other?
Let’s see where it leads.
If anything, go watch the movie if you’ve got some time to kill 
.
Of course, that is AFTER you respond to the questions via comments back to the site!
Welcome back to yet another week at www.implementingscrum.com.
The Guest Blogger this week is Michele Sliger, a fellow Certified Scrum Trainer and awesome person in general (smile).
A few weeks ago some of the Trainers got together in a super-secret-location-on-Earth for a couple of days.
We had a lot of fun, I learned a ton, and you can be sure I will write more about it in this blog in the future!
Michele posed the question to the Trainers, “What are the Scrum Values?”
And. Gulp. I could not name all of them.
Shame on me.
Or? Are they something I just *do* like a lot of people already?
Either way, I thought this would be a good platform for Michele to discuss the Scrum Values and give some great examples for you to use with your Scrum Teams.
Keep learning… I do daily….
Here is the write-up from Michele:
====================
Like Mike, I am a Certified Scrum Trainer and I make my living teaching Scrum and coaching Scrum teams.
One of the things I teach is the Scrum values. Do you know what they are? Take a second and see if you can name them all.
I will give you a hint: there are five, they are one word in length, and one of them is not Honesty. Now stop reading for a moment and when you think you have got them all, come on back.
Ready?
Okay, how did you do?
I am sure none of you cheated by going to the first Scrum book, “Agile Software Development with Scrum” and flipping to the last chapter.
(I can hear it now: “Heck, she said that Honesty wasn’t a value, so where’s the problem?”)
The five Scrum values are, in no particular order:
- 1. Commitment
2. Focus
3. Openness
4. Respect
5. Courage.
Now what do you suppose these mean?
Ask a roomful of people and you’ll get a roomful of answers.
- Openness means that we will tell the product owner “no” when we can’t do any more work in the Sprint.
- Openness means that we will tell management that we are doing Scrum even though we are afraid they will make us stop.
- Openness means that when my colleague takes a three-hour lunch break instead of finishing her tasks that I will have a difficult conversation with her.
- Openness means telling you that I did in fact cheat. I looked up the values in the back of the black book.
(I once had an argument with a co-worker on what “being truthful” meant.
He said that it wasn’t lying if he went to a topless bar and didn’t tell his wife. I said it was a lie, one of omission. We went back and forth, each sure of our morality. So I’m pleased that Ken was careful in his naming with the value of Openness, instead of something like Honesty or Truthfulness, so I don’t have to have arguments over what truth means!)
Because we each interpret the values differently as individuals and as teams, we really need to take a look at each value and decide as a team what that value means to us.
Here are a couple of ways you can do that:
If your group does regular brown-bag lunches, open spaces, or Scrum cocktail hours, pass out copies of that last chapter and say, “This is what we’ll be talking about at our next get-together.”
Then have that informal conversation and see what the team thinks about the values.
Are there any that surprised them?
Are there any that weren’t in line with their personal values?
Can they say that the team has been adhering to all the values?
Are there any values that they think should be listed that are not?
And are there any values that they would like to make a bigger, more overt, part of their daily activities?
When working on the facilitation of team working agreements, try this exercise.
List the values, and this simple template that can be used to turn each value into an actionable working agreement:
We believe in [value] therefore we will [do something].
For example, your team might come back with:
- We believe in respect, therefore we will show up on time for all meetings.
The point is to get those values on the wall somewhere, where they can serve as reminders to the team of the drivers behind the Scrum practices, and of how the team has chosen to work together.
Remember, Scrum is not only value-driven in how it provides the most important features first to the customer, it is also value-driven in how the people choose to work together to get the job done.
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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!
March 25, 2008
Hi all.
Today I’d like to issue you a challenge and follow-through tasks.
The “winners” get bragging rights.
Huh?
OK.
As you may (or may not know) there are a few regular characters in our comic strips. Each of the characters can be found by, “Meeting the Cast.”
Here is what I’d like you to do for me today — if not sooner.
Please.
Head on over to that page and read about what our characters are fleshing out to be (as “real” characters if we can take it that far).
People — it is OK if you do not understand what a “persona” is right now; basically, we want to have a little fun and see what the characters actually “look like” when they are not working in our comic strips. When they leave the office, what do they do? What are their hobbies? What are their dark secrets? Where do they vacation?
Those sort of questions should be addressed based on what we have already written about them today.
Or… if you totally disagree with what we have come up with — give us a better one!
Good or bad idea?
Who knows.
It will be a little fun. All rights remain ours to use in the future (although we will let people know who added what!).
And.
There will probably be a point to this little exercise.
Feel free to write me off-line or via the comment section underneath the original blog entry (or this one… I can be flexible).
Have fun.
Make it a team exercise.
See where it leads.
And get it done this week!
Thank you.
- mike vizdos
www.implementingscrum.com
www.michaelvizdos.com
Welcome back to another day at www.implementingscrum.com.
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 Scrum Community to discuss this entry and other Scrum topics. Thank you!
December 12, 2007
Welcome back to another day at www.implementingscrum.com.
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 Scrum Community to discuss this entry and other Scrum topics. Thank you!
December 11, 2007
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