Gunther Verheyen is an independent Scrum Caretaker and Workplace Humanitarian on a journey of humanizing the workplace.
To everyone who helped in 2013 make the world a little bit of a better place to live and work in (and all others), we say:
I was great knowing you, talking to you, working with you, feeling you were around.
See you next year, for more of the same.
Ian, Jente, Nienke, Gunther & Natascha.
Looking back at the year in music that 2013 was for me, I can only conclude that it’s been an exciting year with a superb mix of music.
Editors have grown into being one my of my all-time favorite bands, and that is not to be underrated, as it puts them next to a band like Bauhaus. 2013 saw the release of their “The Weight Of Your Love“, a fantastic resurrection after the near-death situation of 2012 with original guitarist Chris Urbanowicz leaving. The Weight Of Your Love combines the wide stadion rock music sound with their old indie background, desire for grandeur and acoustic silence. All at once. And then they are still widening their spectrum by intelligent use of the additional musicians but also in Tom’s singing. 
After 3 years of work behind closed doors (much by bass player Paul Simonon), The Clash released a brilliantly packaged overview of their career with the Sound System collection. A great way to finally catch up with this phenomenal band. In their brief existence they produced an enormous variety of tunes and dubs, but always remained true to their punk-style principles and ideals. All of these and a bunch of great extras were re-edited and re-issued and complemented by some little collectibles in a Ghetto Blaster format. Counting 5 regular albums over 8 CDs, and 1 extras album over 3 CDs, a poster, badges, dog tags and a manual.Other much liked music was released by:
In 2012 it seemed I wasn’t involved in music too much. Not enough, that’s for sure. Result of being a workaholic? Anyhow, I still wanted to share:
After rebooting Swans around 2010, Michael Gira released the epic double-sided The Seer album in 2012. It’s been repeatedly, including by the man himself, described as THE ultimate Swans album that Michael Gira not only had in mind during all of his Swan years, but also has been working on for over 30 years.
Gira has transformed totally into the master of his self-shaped universe of martial music with much varying song lengths, styles and tones, with songs that fade away into a gloom an then restart to burst into total fierceness. But these time around Gira often adds a touch of brightness and even some folky tunes to the dark repetitive mantras and drones. He even creates some acoustic drones, quite hypnotic. In a very clear production Gira lyrically sounds familiar with his themes of children of love, mother earth, holy gods.
Somewhere during the year 2013 I had already taken a little note that this was about to be “an explosive year”. It did turn out that way, in a good sense. Looking back at our lives, our childhood and youth, explorations of life as a couple, having children and being parents, maintaining values, ethics and principles at work; many tough and hard lessons, but what a return we got from it.
2013 brought our family many great things. A mix of some highlights:
And those are just a few eruptions of the volcano that this nearly-past year was.
Although Scrum has an acknowledged body of knowledge, the Scrum Guide, it is -by design- incomplete. Scrum is a framework, not a methodology. With Scrum, an empirical foundation is created from which the details and specifics of the actual working processes emerge. And while the actual working processes keep evolving, the foundation of Scrum provides stability.
Scrum needs the continuous selection, application and revision of good practices, strategies and tactics to be really effective. The rules in themselves provide foundational guidance. The effective benefits an organization gets from Scrum largely depend on how the game is played. Ultimately the benefits gained from Scrum will vary with the implementation, usage and application of Scrum; from roles, rules, players, and principles to techniques, practices, strategies and tactics.
Doing Scrum, and doing it properly, is only the beginning. Yes, you do Scrum if you have the formal elements in place. And from that much more beauty comes within reach. We refer to this idea as ScrumAnd.
There is a ScrumAnd for a myriad of elements included in or attached to the use of the Scrum framework. I will illustrate the ScrumAnd potential to augment the fun, energy, and benefits from Scrum upon 3 elements only:
Yes, you do Scrum if you have a Product Owner. And you will do even better depending on how the role is fulfilled:
Scrum is at first often implemented as the new IT-process, or is started within the IT-departments exclusively. So, a business analyst is put in the role. In organizations suffering from the traditional Business-IT dichotomy, it is often much later that business comes into play; forcing themselves in or being invited to do so.
Yes, you do Scrum if you have a definition of Done. And you will do even better when it reflects ‘releasable’ and all work for it can be done within a Sprint (not post-Sprint):
Yes, you do Scrum if you have a Scrum Team with a Development Team, a Product Owner, and a Scrum Master. And you will do even better when the team can improve its relationships and collaboration, often by remaining stable:
Self-organized team work is the corner stone of Scrum. Teams however cannot be built or constructed like a mechanical object. With support, cherishing and nurturing, a collaborative team might gradually emerge.
Organizations tend to overlook the scaling potential in the way Scrum is being played. Take advantage of these options first, enjoy the cumulative effect of multiple ScrumAnds and avoid the additional complexity that arises from volume-oriented scaling like adding people, adding teams, adding roles, adding phases.
The aim to deliver valuable software is a great, core principle of the agile movement. The difficulty however is that ‘value’ in itself is hardly quantifiable. Yet, I do believe it is imperative to think in terms of value in software development and therefore overcome some fluffiness attached to ‘value’. If we don’t find actionable ways to deal with ‘value’ it might remain meaningless; another buzz word, another way of getting people to think it’s time to move on to the next hype. It is not only difficult to quantify value, it is not even necessary, maybe even undesirable. It is better to measure whether we are delivering value (effectively).
For many years we were tricked into believing that software development can be considered a success if we meet 3 criteria: deliver (1) all promised requirements (2) within the planned time (3) for the allocated budget. It is reflected in the famous iron triangle of software development.
That in turn tricked us into believing that, in order to be successful, we had to exhaustively analyze, detail and describe all requirements upfront, and get formal approval and sign off over them before the actual programming can be done. The underlying motivation is to secure the first element of what we were told defines success, the ‘requirements’.
This beforehand gathered information then becomes the input to careful and exhaustive calculations for the delivery part, often with the addition of some ‘contingency’. The underlying motivation is to set and fix the other two elements that we were told make out success, time and budget.
The result is poured into a plan, often complemented by risk mitigation strategies and other exception procedures. When this plan and all its components and clauses are approved and signed off, implementation can -finally- start. And then, obviously, it is just a matter of following the plan to be successful. Deviations from the plan, seemingly happening sometimes, are unlikely to cause any real problems, because it’s what ‘change request’ instances are for (meetings, documents, approvals, and sign offs).
Yet, things aren’t that easy. The installments of the mentioned extra safety nets are already an indication that, despite our firmness, this approach isn’t really giving us the certainty it claims to have. And despite the safety nets, the detailed preparations and the seemingly perfect plans, many projects are plainly cancelled (29% according to the Chaos Report by the Standish Group of 2011) or in the end still fail in meeting the widely accepted success criteria of scope+time+budget (57%).
Some however are actually successful in delivering according to the three predictions (14%). But then, success doesn’t take into account that often quality was lowered to unacceptable levels in order to live up to the success criteria; reason why it’s good to add that as a fourth variable to the iron triangle (see figure). Success doesn’t take into account that the elapsed time might be according to plan, but may business-wise be extremely slow. Note that it is not unusual for projects to deliver software no sooner than 12-24 months after the start! Success doesn’t take into account that by the time the software actually becomes available for use, nobody really sees much ‘value’ in the features anymore; at all rendering them useless or in the functional way the features are implemented. More innovative ideas for them have emerged, or improved technological ways to implement them are discovered. It connects to the finding that 64% of features, produced in this way, are rarely or never used.
The three factors they told us defined ‘success’, fail in doing exactly that. And even if they are met, they still only reflect how successful the ‘delivery’ of the software to the market is, not how the software is being received or appreciated on the market place, let alone that the approach helps us addressing changes or new requests from the market place. The three factors fail in showing how valuable the software is; it only says that a version of software got out the door at certain predicted conditions.
Agile overcomes the fallacy of traditional, upfront predictions and descriptions with collaboration, communication, incremental progress and continuous improvement. All risks taken are limited in time through time-boxed iterations. Time-boxing allows adaptation and adjustment within the process.
The agile movement stresses the importance of active business involvement as part of cross-functional development work. The agile movement stresses the need for frequent releases to the market place to learn what actually is appreciated. There is no better risk mitigation than regular feedback from actual users.
Scrum, as leading framework for agile software development, is designed upon the foundation that software development is too complex for a predictive approach. Scrum implements empiricism in software development, thriving on frequent inspections to decide on the best possible adaptations. Inspections however are pointless if the inspected information is not fully known, opaque instead of transparent, and if the inspection is not done against known and agreed standards and definitions.
The target of the adaptations is not only the software being produced, it is also about the tools, the engineering practices, the relationships, the process and the three elements they told us define success, i.e. budget, scope and time. Scrum does not care about the abused notion of ‘project’. The concept of ‘project’ generally only serves the idea that success is possible if software is delivered on time, within budget and has all the predicted features. Scrum focuses on the software product (having a role and an artefact for its owner and its backlog) and incremental sustenance of the product.
The foundational belief to this is that the success of software development is defined by the capability to satisfy and impress the consumers of the features, at a reasonable price, at a cost that has an effective return, with creation happening in a way that is sustainable for all people in the ecosystem of the product.
The success of an organization, in terms of survival, prosperity and leadership, increasingly depends on their ‘agility’, i.e. their overall capability to deliver value in a context of constant change, evolution, innovation, improvement and re-invention.
The difficulty in establishing the value of software or software requirements is that it depends on context, time, technology, market, business domain. It also cannot be reduced to one parameter only. Predicting value doesn’t make much sense either, since it can only be validated by the market place.
Scrum.org has developed the Agility Path framework to help organisations increase their agility and move toward a value-driven existence.
Agility Path focuses not on the illusive goal of calculating and predicting value or similar magic. With Agility Path the outcome of an organization’s work is measured with metrics to help them think about the way that outcome is achieved. Organizations get a clear indication on whether they are delivering value or not. If from the metrics it seems they are not, they have many areas and domains to inspect further, and do adaptations by installing, removing or improving practices, tools and processes. It is how the Scrum framework is used to manage the change process, the transformation of an organisation required to increase their agility.
The metrics provide the transparency needed to identify the areas where adaptation has the most impact. Think in terms of business metrics like employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, revenues, investment in agile, etc. Think in terms of delivery capability metrics like cycle time, release frequency, defects, etc.
All metrics are consolidated into an overall Agility Index for the organization. This Agility Index is an indication of how effective the organization is in delivering value. One Agility Index is bound to time, place and context. The exact figure is of no importance. The evolution is of importance. The underlying set of metrics is of importance. The insights gained from the metrics, as a source of improvement, are of importance.
There is no magical formula to calculate value, and even when trying to calculate value to steer development priorities, it is a prediction, an assumption that remains to be validated (or contradicted) when you actually go to market. You can never be sure.
The best we can do is to capture the results of our actions with metrics, and do those measurements regularly. We detect trends and patterns (and prefer that over a naked, singular figure). We relate that back to how we work, change how we work, and measure the change in outcome of that assumed improvement. We do that endlessly and relentlessly. We continuously improve by learning and adapting. We get the most out of what we do.
This flexibility primarily helps organizations respond better and faster to change, it implements openness to change over ignoring or blocking it. Once the thinking gets ingrained and new ways of working are installed, organisations discover that there may be different options to respond, thereby embracing change as a source of information. And, finally, organisations start innovating, be ahead and cause change (for the others to follow). Thus an agile approach harnesses change for the customer’s competitive advantage, and the organization’s agility.
Saturday September 27 1997. The morning of a nice day. The morning that my wife and I got married. It was not the start, but a continuation of a shared life that started 4 1/2 years earlier. Nevertheless, a day to remember. A milestone still. A celebration of unity. That lasts and keeps lasting.
There’s sugar on your soul
You’re like no one I know
You’re the life of another world
You swallow me whole(Editors, Sugar, 2013)
Scrum is not a goal in itself, Scrum is a mean. Scrum is a path that a person, a team, an organization takes toward increased competitiveness, higher responsiveness, more learning, more creativity, optimistic opportunism, a sustainable way of working, restored respect for people. Scrum is a journey toward increased… agility.
I have written a book about Scrum, published on 4 November 2013.
As Scrum is designed to help people, organizations and teams embark on a journey, my book is a smart travel companion for that journey. My book is a pocket guide that can help you prepare, take off, and get going. And while on the road you can always have a quick peek again to find your way or re-orient.
My book is completely focused on Scrum. It was an explicit choice to stick to the topic, Scrum. And to be essential about that. As David Starr, Agile craftsman at Microsoft, said upon reviewing an early version, it is “without a drop of hyperbole“. Ken Schwaber, my fellow-traveller at Scrum.org and co-creator of Scrum, says it is plainly the best description of Scrum currently available. Ken has also written the foreword, summarized as “An outstanding accomplishment that simmers with intelligence.”
The book has 4 chapters:
Other appreciated reviewers were Ralph Jocham, Agile professional and Professional Scrum trainer, and Patricia Kong, director of partners at Scrum.org. Ralph says this is the book he will advise his students, coachees and organizations to read in order to learn the essential Scrum. Patricia says she would have loved to have this book when she entered the world of Scrum. Because she didn’t find one at the time.
The book, “Scrum – A Pocket Guide (A Smart Travel Companion)” will be published by Van Haren. My gratitude goes out to their team that has made this possible!
Pre-order your copy at Amazon (UK) or at the publisher’s webshop.
De eerste schooldag van het nieuwe schooljaar hebben we weeral achter de rug, gisteren, maandag 2 september 2013.
Zoals gebruikelijk nemen we foto’s van onze kroost. En dan voegen we weeral een jaartje toe aan onze compilatie:
En dit jaar hebben we voor de eerste maal 3 kindjes die allemaal het nieuwe schooljaar aanvangen:
Nu ja, wij zouden ‘wij’ niet zijn als alles vlekkeloos verloopt. Nienke heeft verleden jaar de instapklas gedaan, en gaat dus nu naar de eerste ‘echte’ kleuterklas. We hadden echter verleden week vastgesteld dat ze uit haar vriendengroepje was getrokken en in een andere klas dan hen was gesplitst. Navraag bij de juffen leerde ons dat ze daar niet echt bij stil gestaan hadden. Gewoon, lijstje afgelopen tot het gewenste aantal was bereikt en streep getrokken. Afgehandeld. Zoals de conversatie.
Zo niet bij ons. Een mailtje naar de directeur leidde wel tot een gesprek, niet tot dialoog. De misnoegde, want beledigde, knorpot maakte duidelijk dat dit een genomen beslissing was. Afgehandeld.
Zo niet bij ons. Nienke gaat naar een andere school, en wel vlak bij huis. Lekker wortelen in Ekeren. En dat dat de enige goede beslissing is, kunnen we afmeten aan het gebrek aan hechting dat ze heeft op haar huidige school, waardoor ze nu al naar de andere school wilde (we hebben het haar wel verteld, natuurlijk).
Hmm, 3 kinderen, 3 scholen. Best wel fun, eigenlijk. De drive om goede keuzes te maken, niet zomaar zo-zo keuzes. It’s a way of life, als je er goed over zou nadenken. Intussen heb ik geleerd er trots op te zijn. Free spirits.
No excuses, I was a teenager in the ’80s. And I gave my girlfriend/wife their best of album ’81-’90. Yet I never showed much interest in the Waterboys, despite my wide interest in music. Maybe I was too fed up with ‘The Whole of the Moon’ as it was really, really played a lot in the places I went out in the weekends around ’86-’87? Maybe it didn’t fit my cool punk-wave ways (not preventing me to deeply love The Smiths and The Triffids, to name a few)? Maybe my mind just wasn’t ready for it, not free enough a spirit by then?
It wasn’t until 2000 that I bought my first Waterboys record, the by then just released A Rock in the Weary Land. No idea where the sudden attraction came from. Was it because it was described as a comeback? Was it because of the fooling around with vocoders and other distorters, the heavy electricity on the record? 
It was a strange attraction. That led to me immediately falling in love with this rock called love; its passion, drive, pleasure. It turned out the start of a rollercoaster of musical brainfloods that started by subsequently also purchasing the EP Is She Conscious from the 2000 album. That EP included an incredible 15 minutes live version of Savage Earth Heart. To my surprise this song originated from their early years. And that got me interested to dive further.
When the early Waterboys albums one by one got re-released with substantial remastering and editing by mr. Mike Scott I bought them as they were put out. And consistently fell in love with each of them, while greedily and gratefully feeding my mind on the fascinating background added in Mike’s sleeve notes. I grew along with each re-release to finally reach the big music of This Is The Sea via The Waterboys and A Pagan Place. And so, some silly 20 years after locking it out of my musical world, I discovered the amazing beauty, melodies, layers and power of The Whole of the Moon. Although it is ‘Red Army Blues’ that gets me in tears every time again.
Impatient and near-unbearable waiting followed, but then finally also Fisherman’s Blues was re-released. And 20 years after the boys themselves ‘slightly’ changed direction (understatement), I was able to savour the outcome of their Irish adventures. The sleeve notes only partially shed light over this impressive turn they took, and the years of wandering and exploring it took to create it. That didn’t prevent me from feeling the free spirit that breaths throughout the Fisherman’s work.
Later on I was impressed by the bluesy Too Close To Heaven too, and its refurbished and boosted edits of FB sessions. Unfortunately Universal Hall and Book of Lightning didn’t overload me with enthusiasm therefore skipping the Karma Burning album, not even realizing it’s a live album. Hmm, Waterboys and live playing, that always works, do I know now. I did feel Mike’s fond love for music on one of his solo albums that I bought in the mean time, Bring ’em All In.
More and more, in interviews mr. Mike alluded to his lack of real inspiration, although reviews of their live performances were full of praise, one by one. But then, 2011, the message of the release of An Appointment with Mr. Yeats reached me (see my Top Music 2011 summary), convincing me to buy it. It turned out to be wildly inspirational, bewildering, enthusiast, broad, folk danceable while rocking as in the big music era. Artistically, the album melts the many faces of the Waterboys into one highly cohesive, unique musical picture.
And next, 2013, a tweet by a rock journalist pointed me to Mike Scott’s autobiography, Adventures of a Waterboy. I took it on our family holiday early August 2013, intrigued but also eager to be ‘prepared’ for the live gig of The Waterboys we were about to attend by the end of August in Antwerp (yes, first time we get to see them on stage). Through it I hoped to better understand who the man is that will be on that stage. A wild man, somewhat shamanist and an all-music madman, as he is in my imagination?
So my wife and I unilaterally made an appointment with Mr. Scott to go discover these Waterboys live; live on stage, the only platform mr. Mike considers the right one for a musician to grow an audience; much more than music business tricks like videos, music clips, alternate releases of the same song, etc. Some things I learned from his fantastic book. I will come back to his adventurous book, but note that the gig was fantastic, guiding us through all the worlds of the Waterboys; folk, rock, big music, tiny music, acoustic, improvised, extended, unexpected, driven by the spirits. The chemistry between Mick and Steve is obvious and shiny. And Steve Wickham brilliantly took over the brass and trumpets from the first albums with his terrific fiddling.
Scrum seems to puzzle some people. Oddly enough most of them are puzzled by the simplicity of Scrum, yet find it difficult to implement all elements of Scrum. There is some weird logic in play saying that it can’t be that simple, so elements of Scrum are replaced with much more and preferably highly complicated structures, procedures and processes.
Scrum has 3 roles, 3 artefacts and 5 events. It is enough to empirically solve the complex puzzle of software development, but all are required to cover all accountabilities in software development. Complete simplicity is the key. It doesn’t make it easier to play the game, but it does help to focus on the problem, and not on the difficulties that the structures themselves cause.
Following jigsaw representation of the Scrum framework (1) shows all elements that formally make out Scrum, and (2) it helps seeing that Scrum isn’t complete when you don’t have all the pieces in place:
| Scrum Artifacts: Wha… on Meetings in Scrum, actually | |
| Zmiany w Scrum Guide… on There’s value in the Scr… | |
 | yy on A Foundation for the Future |
 | ServiceNow CSA Exam on There’s value in the Scr… |
 | Prepare for ServiceN… on There’s value in the Scr… |