Rob Maher

This is what you might know as the daily ‘stand up.’ It is the most abused, tortured and mistreated meeting in Scrum. Or not even Scrum. If nothing else, this is usually the part of Scrum that organizations adopt and keep. If they do nothing else then they do this. And boy do they do it! This meeting is too good for 15mins, let’s keep it going for 45! There are some common anti-patterns that I have come across during this meeting so I thought that I would share them with you. See if you recognize them from your daily scrum. The WaterBoarder Torture. Plain and Simple. I am going to keep you standing up for 45 minutes whilst everyone tells me what exactly they did yesterday and what they plan to do tomorrow. Have a problem with the binary search function? Lets discuss it whilst we all stand here listening. Hey the 10 of us have nothing better to do. The 8 Teams of 1 Person We are not a team. We work on our own. We talk once a day at this ‘mandated’ meeting. Then we each go our separate ways until tomorrow. We work on one task / story each. So we give our update. Then we have to listen to 7 others give theirs. But we don’t care. It does not affect us in any way other than having to stand through this boring meeting. The Wall Talker He approaches the board. He stops. He looks around and starts talking. Quietly. No-one can hear him because he is talking to a wall. Everyone strains to hear, and then gives up. The Over Sharer I know that I didn’t finish much yesterday but let me explain why. Well I had an unscheduled meeting from 10 until 11. I then got a call from my mother in law who said that she had a sore knee. I had to leave work early to drive her to the hospital and then take her home….. The Goldfish Memory I can’t remember what I did yesterday. The Photographic Memory Arrives with pages of notes to read from to justify quite how busy they really are. The Shaver (aka The Hidden Impediment) That task that was 6 hours yesterday. Today it has 5 hours left. Tomorrow it will be 4 hours. Even though you worked on it all day. You need help. You know it and we know it. Please ask your team, one of them would love to help you. Now for the really controversial part. Who said that you have to stand up? Really? Why don't you check that again... Want to sit down at your Daily Scrum, do it. If any of these meetings sound like yours then maybe it’s time for a change. We stood up because the meetings were short. If the meeting isn’t short why are you standing up? Photo licensed via Creative Commons https://www.flickr.com/photos/dpstyles/4835354126

I am sitting in in a café in Singapore enjoying a well-deserved drink and dinner after teaching day 1 of the Scrum.org Professional Scrum Product Owner course. We have students from Indonesia, Singapore and Cambodia on the course. We have spent much of the first day chasing the idea of value in product development. Where does the value reside in our product backlog. How do we identify it, prioritise it and maximise it. Identifying value is hard. Is it our value, our customers value or both? Is it profit generated, satisfaction earned or costs saved? These are some of the many challenges of Product Ownership today. We ask a lot of our Product Owners. We ask that they be entrepreneurs, experimenters, and like product explorers. We ask that they provide a clear compelling vision to our teams and are able to accurately represent many conflicting stakeholders. This is hard. Are we asking too much? Can you really bring a start up mind set to a bank or an insurance company? Can a validated learning approach really exist in corporate IT? Are they able to actually interpret and respond to Scrum’s feedback loops? Many companies ‘assign’ product owners from the ‘business’ (don’t you love that word.) If you talk about anyone outside of IT as ‘the business’ then I worry for you. If you see them as the business, what do they see you as? Probably a monopoly provider of questionable service. What do you think would happen if ‘the business’ could choose a different service provider? Would they still choose you? If they didn’t could you attract new clients? I thought not. You care about the success of the organisation. So do they. You are on the same team. You are not ‘trusted partners of the business’, you are the business. An assigned Product Owner who already has a full time job will not work – yes I did say that. Let’s turn this round. Are you a full time developer / tester / ba / other – great. Let’s pretend we have an exciting new project and it’s so important that it gets funded. We show how important it is by having you be the Product Owner. As well as your day job of course. What could possibly go wrong? These are often multi-million dollar programs / projects. I don’t want to devalue your day job, but really? We ask a lot of our Product Owners. Maybe too much. But don’t make it impossible.

I am a Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org. I work with lots of organizations to help them become more agile. I see a lot of bad Scrum. More than my fair share. Sometimes I see so much bad Scrum that it makes me question why I do this. This post is my attempt to remind myself why. What is bad Scrum? Lets start with what it is not. Scrum is not about following rules. There is an industry full of people that have turned Scrum into a religion. I kid you not. They even have names for themselves. They call themselves 'white robes'. They obsess over every change to the Scrum guide and translate the 'founders' intent for you. They will speak of your dysfunctions (sins), they will point out your deviations from the one true path and they will shame you. Scrum is not my religion. Don't make it yours. Be skeptical. There are no higher beings when it comes to Scrum. I am not a high priest and I don't need a high priest. Scrum is not about mechanics. They are merely there to serve a purpose. The mechanics are a means not an end. The mechanics do not define the result. Can I follow all the rules and mechanics and have bad Scrum - you bet. Scrum is freedom. Freedom from the tyranny of trying to meet someone else's commitments (made for you.). It is freedom from being told to be 'accountable', meet your 'commitments' and other 'motivational' words. It is freedom from being measured against someone else promises. It is freedom from feeling like a cog in an endless machine. It is freedom to question, to discover, to disagree, to decide how to work, how to improve and how to make your own promises. What is bad Scrum? If you are not feeling any of these freedoms and you are 'doing' Scrum then you already know the answer. Bad Scrum is mechanical. It's a belief in magic. If we stand up for 15mins every day, attend lots of meetings, call someone a Scrum Master then things should be better right? A Scrum Master just books the meetings and makes sure everyone turns up right? Right? If we decide the features that should be in a release and we decide what date that release will ship we can just tell our self-organizing team and they should be able to deliver it, right? Welcome to bad Scrum. If we decide that the Project Managers should be Scrum Masters but our new teams are self-organizing and therefore accountable for the outcomes, welcome to bad Scrum. If you are being asked to 'drive success' for the team then you are not part of the solution. Lots of companies decide that Scrum has too many holes. It doesn't dictate documentation, dependencies, scaling etc. We need to define that. So they reach out to a prescriptive model (SAFe - I am looking at you) or 'customize' it to add what is missing. Welcome to bad Scrum. The gaps ARE the power. The gaps are where we can decide what works best for us. The gaps are the opportunities. Revel in the gaps. Glory in the gaps. The gaps are what makes this what it is. The gaps are where teams can actually define their own future. The gaps leave room for a self-organizing team to exist. Scrum doesn't need to be customized - just fill in the gaps with what makes your team special. There is genius in empiricism. Predicting the future is hard. Adjusting to evidence is easy if we are given the chance, and people are willing to hear the truth. A team that is allowed to self-organize don't need anyone to 'drive' them. Good Scrum is not about measuring adherence to practices or mechanics. Be skeptical. If your consultant arrives and defines success by measuring practices, think about what you are advocating. You have created a proxy for success. That proxy involves post-it notes and standing up. Really? Good Scrum is exciting. Good Scrum teams have purpose. They have fun. They are not defined by the length of their planning meeting. Good Scrum teams do not need someone to 'empower' them. I have my own power thanks and I don't need yours. Good Scrum teams crave feedback. They crave it from their process, their products, their stakeholders, and each other. Feedback is power. Feedback drives improvement. The Scrum framework gives us a way to gather feedback. Our response to this feedback defines us. These teams need someone to care. Someone to care about more than just the next feature, or project deadline. Scrum Master this is you. You are there to create the environment for this type of team to exist and thrive. You are there to gather this feedback, and help your organization act on it. Do nothing and expect no improvement. Scrum is merely the vehicle that will surface these opportunities for greatness. They will be challenging, they will appear unsolvable. They are not. Look at each day and ask yourself - 'are we better than yesterday?' Your job has nothing to do with booking meetings. If you care - I hope we meet. What type of Scrum do you have? Image courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewalmonroth/14486687503 - licensed via Creative Commons