Wow, the responses last week from my first “Random Thought Scrum Challenge” were awesome.

Thank you for all who participated. Let’s try another one for the week.

Same rules: You’ll have just about 24 hours to respond, so please post this on twitter and anywhere else (your own blog?) where you think interest may be around this one.

I’ll then post a synopsis of the results like I did for the first Scrum Challenge — Scrum Is…

So… this weeks Random Thought Scrum Challenge #2 is:

“An awesome Product Owner on a Scrum Team will…”

OK… finish that statement via Twitter (@mvizdos) or below in the comments.

Thank you!

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

Yesterday I thought I’d try something different and opened a “Scrum Challenge” with an open ended statement, “Scrum is…”

Wow, did you respond. Many comments came in connected to the blog entry (you can see the originals up to the date of writing this entry; however, I know there will be more! Others came in over Twitter.

I do love the Internet and my followers (all of you!!!). I thank all who participated. I may make this a regular event with different “Random” Scrum Challenge questions!

When starting the *random* open ended statement with, “Scrum is…”, here is a list of the responses:

• Pure Randomness (Twitter)
• Humane (Twitter)
• A project framework designed for efficient human communication
• A magic potion that heals leprosy and cures blindness
• what gets IT Done
• A framework with constraints on behavior that cause a complex adaptive system to self-organize into an intelligent state
• Not a way to solve your problems. It is a way to find what the problems are.
• Moving forward while running in circle
• Just another way of spelling “common sense”
• Not a silver bullet, but I will never run another project without it.
• The only way software should be developed!
• An ugly word (and deliberately so).

This is an awesome list from my readers about what their perception of Scrum is (and is not). I got this by asking a very open ended two word statement… “Scrum is….”

What has this list of peoples perception caused you to think about what Scrum is (and is not)? Do you agree or disagree with them all?

Now… How can you apply this on your Scrum Teams?

Think about the possibilities in your organization if you change around questions to an open ended statement, and then be quiet [shut up] and wait for the responses.

This is an effective technique I use when training new ScrumMasters and coaching existing teams.

My next question… Do you want to see something like this in the future?

I’ll ask a seemingly *random* question related to Scrum and then allow for about 24 hours to tally up the results — then give you (my reader!) a synopsis of the results AND how you can use what you have learned in this posting in your real world today.

This will not be the only posting type (you’ll still get cartoons, interviews, and guest postings too!).

Can this type of entry help you start some of the tough conversations about software development?

Please leave your thoughts, ideas, and recommendations in the comments section below this blog entry.

I appreciate it and am glad to be “back” doing this again…

Thank you!

- mike vizdos

I am gathering some great guest postings and am starting to queue up some new cartoons about Scrum (yeah!!!!). You’ll start seeing them in your email and/or on your RSS feeds soon (remember e-mail subscribers get some really cool freebies and other “inside information”).

I want to try something tonight, and I want you to pass this on to your friends (and enemies) and anyone who either knows what Scrum is — or is not.

I want you to finish this sentence:

“Scrum is…”

And… post them to comments on the blog or on twitter (I am mvizdos there and please retweet this challenge (you can do this right on top of this posting under the title!).

What am I going to do with it?

Well… I am giving the universe 24.235 hours to respond. After that, I will have to create a post that integrates all your ideas.

Think it can be done?

Let’s see where this goes!

Thank you.

- mike vizdos

The chat test today during the two hour-long sessions was a success.

I learned many things, and, as all things we do with Scrum the next iteration will be even better.

I can go into the retrospective we had — but suffice it to say that there were enough in the “cons” section (versus “pro”) for trying another tool.

So.

From 13:00 – 14:00 EST (GMT-4), Friday, June 12, 2009, we will test a new page (it is located at www.implementingscrum.com/chat).  And a new chat system.  Feel free to go in and take a look at it ahead of time; however, I will plan on being there for an hour in the afternoon to discuss a Product Backlog for the ImplementingScrum site.

As a stakeholder, I’d really appreciate like your input.

Tony is back from a short vacation and we will have yet another comic strip out early next week.

And.

I’ll make an announcement on Friday night that will put another service “live” on this site.  And yes, as usual, it is still all free.  I do love what I do for a living, and thank all my clients (and future clients) for the work I get so that I can give back to the community through initiatives like this site, www.implementingscrum.com.

And hey… if you are not following me on Twitter yet… do so on the right side of the screen in the sidebar.  It is 2009 and there is so much GREAT stuff on that system about agile and scrum.  Stuff you should not miss!  Including real-time announcements that I do not make via the blog entry or e-mail (it is usually THAT time sensitive!).

I hope to see you online to discuss the Product Backlog for the site at 13:00 EST (GMT-4) at the following address:  www.implementingscrum.com/chat.

Thank you.

- mike vizdos

I want to try a new service so if you have time Thursday, June 11, 2009, to try this with me — I will be online from 10:00AM – 11:00AM and then 2:00PM – 3:00PM (Both are in Eastern Time (GMT-4) – I am currently in Richmond, Virginia, USA).

It is an interactive chat session that may have some potential for all of us.

See you Thursday! Let’s see where this leads…

- mike vizdos

I started using “Solo Scrum” again. This means that I am playing the three roles all by myself.

What are the three roles?

1) Product Owner
2) Team Member
3) ScrumMaster.

After only one day (Thursday) of using this again, some big things jumped out at me as lessons learned.

Take a look at the video and please provide comments to what you see so far.

Is this kind of thing useful to you? Do you see similar mistakes?

I’ll see if I can make some improvements on Friday and share them with you.

Have an awesome weekend (or welcome to Monday!).

Thank you!

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

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

Today is our first try at a new format (in addition to the cartoons) at www.implementingscrum.com.

It is called, “ImplementingScrum – UnScripted” and will feature audio and/or video in different formats along the way.  By the time this goes out, it should be out on youtube and here is a link to the “.mov” format (uses quicktime and is just under 17MB — for some reason this is MUCH clearer — any recommendations???).

Using FeedBurner, it should also find it’s way out to iTunes as a podcast… let’s see together how it all works and continue to inspect and adapt.

Fair? (smile)

This first version of this is with a guy “Down Under” who had some spectacular patience with me this morning (in addition to the fifteen hour time difference!).

His name is James Brett and he maintains a site at www.scrummaster.com.au and recently (with a LOT of help with the people there!) published a survey, where you can see the results at www.scrummaster.com.au/Article.mvc/Detail/43 or download the PDF file from www.scrummaster.com.au/Content/download/ScrumSurveyResultsJan09.pdf.

The video of this is about eight minutes long and goes into the survey a bit and introduces the topic.  It is not meant to be exhaustive — right now it is a test of the technology convergence(s) and as usual we want to keep these things short and to the point.

A few other references made in the video included a retrospective formats article and retrospective why.

You can also check out a few cartoons about retropectives on this site (there is a three part series here:

www.implementingscrum.com/2007/09/04/scary-team-retrospectives-part-one/

www.implementingscrum.com/2007/09/10/retrospectives-not-just-reading-a-book-part-two/

www.implementingscrum.com/2007/09/17/walk-into-the-light-retrospectives-part-3-of-3/

As usual, any errors anywhere on the video or my site — I accept that responsibility.

Take a look at the video and the links above for the survey and other stuff and PLEASE comment about it below.

Inspect and Adapt.

Let’s see where we go.

As usual!

Thank you.

- mike vizdos

www.implementingscrum.com
www.michaelvizdos.com