Teams | Implementing Scrum

Here is my next request….

… in order to help *everyone* in our community, I’d like to ask for the following people to please contact me off-line from the blog:

1) If you are currently looking for a Scrum type job. What role? What experience level? Tell me what you can about *you* and *your needs*.

2) If you are working in a company and know you have OPEN REAL positions for people who are in the first position above (LOOKING for work).

3) If you know people in your circle of friends PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE forward this email or call them today and have them contact me directly.

In the past six months or so I have been informally connecting these three groups of people together and have promised myself to take it up a notch and see if we can get our community working together to solve some of these things.

I know all three types of you are out there.

Time to speak up!

I am going to try a *small* experiment.

And see where it goes.

Fair?

Let’s go!

Let me know.

And.

As usual.

Thank you.

- mike vizdos (mvizdos@gmail.com)

Posted in Announcements, Blog, ScrumMaster, Teams — by mvizdos on 04/07/09 (2) comments

ImplementingScrum – UnScripted – Confusing Daily Scrums

www.implementingscrum.com -- UnScripted -- February 10, 2009

Good day.

This is another version of the “UnScripted” blog entry on the site implementingscrum.com.

Today I’d actually like to post a question from one of my readers that I’d like to get feedback from you — the community — via answers in the comments of this blog. I’ll plan on doing a follow-up to this but as usual, I want to show the community we can all learn from each other…

I have an opinion. Of course!

—————————–

Hello Mike,

I took your class last year and I am a CSM now. I have not had the chance to be Scrum Master on a project yet, but it is in the near future.

Currently I am on a project that has 2 week sprints and on a team of 8.

The question came up yesterday during our Retrospective that during out last sprint there were a lot of chickens on the scrum calls.

How do we handle this?

I know that if you don’t have any tasks to complete or you have completed your tasks you should be reporting yourself as “chicken”, but with stakeholders on the call everyday hearing 2 people report tasks and the rest of the team reporting “chicken” every day for almost 2 weeks…doesn’t that appear to the stakeholders that only 2 people are working?

IS there another way to still follow the Pig/Chicken rule without appearing to the stakeholders that there are a lot of people not working?

Please advise.

This was a discussion that was placed on the action item list due to too many conflicts between team members.

Have you seen this before?

How was it handled in other teams/projects?

Comments Please!

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

Posted in Blog, Cartoons, Chickens, ScrumMaster, Teams, UnScripted — by mvizdos on 02/10/09 (7) comments

Scrum: Coach. Consultant. Mentor. Super-Hero…

Thanks for reading the latest blog entry at www.implementingscrum.com.

One of the things I hear a lot about (both inside and outside of our little industry in the world) is the differences between coaches, consultants, and mentors.

Which brought me back to a discussion I had a few years ago with John Snuggs (shout out!) who used to poke me about wearing my “Captain Obvious” hat.

Which then lead to the super-hero-wearing-ScrumMaster in the comic strip above.

And.

Then the elephant.

Huh?

What does that elephant represent?

In America, we talk about this thing called, “An elephant in the room” which is something reallllllllllly uncomfortable that everyone knows is there but is afraid to bring it up. Make sense?

Sooo… besides being the elephant in the room… what does Captain Obvious need to teach us about Scrum “Coaches” versus “Consultants” versus “Mentors”?

This could be one of those epic postings with me talking about the ins-and-outs of the three words and how they not only sound different — but in the real world ARE different.

So.

Question to you… and I will talk and post more about this… in the comments section write more about the good, the bad, and the ugly about the differences you see in either the people you hire, work with, or ARE.

Elephant recognized.

Let’s hear more about what this means to you. And your teams. And your organizations.

And of course… this is leading somewhere. It always does.

And it usually surprises even me (heh).

Time for Captain Obvious. Pointing out the elephant in the room.

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

Posted in Blog, Cartoons, ScrumMaster, Teams, Training — by mvizdos on 02/04/09 (3) comments

Spinal Tap. Without a Lumbar Puncture. Painful?

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 .