Category: Agile

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A Mirror of the Scrum Master’s Work (so far)

Introducing “ScrumAnd”

Jigsaw Scrum

Adopting Scrum best starts by doing Scrum in the first place, getting all the formal elements of Scrum in place. It is like a jigsaw that isn’t complete until you have fitted all the pieces together. Luckily Scrum doesn’t have many pieces: 3 roles, 3 artifacts and 5 events. A simple set of rules can emerge complex behavior.

This ability to say “Yes, we do Scrum” however is only the start, not the end. Scrum is not the goal, Scrum is a mean to a goal. In order to increase the benefits, the way Scrum is used is to be maximized, thereby moving to “Yes, we do Scrum. And…“. There is a “ScrumAnd” for a myriad of elements. In the post Illustrations of ScrumAnd this was demonstrated through (1) the Product Owner role, (2) the ability to create releasable Increments and (3) the level of collaboration within a team.

Note: in 2018 I elaborated on the topic by describing how the ScrumAnd stance requires though and discipline.

Applying the “ScrumAnd” model on the role of the Scrum Master.

The Scrum Master facilitates Product Owners, Development Teams and the wider organization with services. The benefits gained through Scrum depend on the services provided by the Scrum Master. Or is it the other way around?

ScrumAnd - Scrum Master

It is unfavorable, difficult and probably impossible to forcefully command people, teams and organizations into higher performance. In a “ScrumAnd” view on the Scrum Master role, there is less of a deliberate choice or strategy involved to increase benefits.

Teams though can be facilitated and wisely lead into benefits that will last. Yes, you do Scrum if you have a Scrum Master. And the level of services that the Scrum Master provides probably reflects the state of Scrum:

  • A Scrum Master teaches techniques for others to use; how to manage Product Backlog (syntax, sizing, splitting, grouping, descriptions, refining, dependencies), how to create visibility of progress (burndown charts, Scrum boards, cards, velocity, release plans), creating a definition of Done, how to plan and execute a Sprint, how to do a Sprint Retrospective meeting, the value of time-boxing.
  • A Scrum Master helps teams and their wider environment optimize the use of Scrum through Scrum’s foundation in empiricism; how Scrum implements transparency, inspection and adaptation, how Scrum helps when only the past is certain and the future is uncertain and highly unpredictable.
  • A Scrum Master shifts the focus from using Scrum to deliver on a set expectations (scope against time and budget) toward organizing work for creating the most valuable outcome; shifts focus from the process itself to the goal of the process.
  • A Scrum Master focuses on behavior, instead of ‘process’ and even outcomes. Accountability drives behavior, and behavior becomes grounded in the Scrum values, and Scrum is understood and applied through the values and principles expressed in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.
  • A Scrum Master is present with a team, and within the organization; a silent, non-intrusive, mentoring, comforting, observing presence.

Scrum Masters are often expected to operate on the practices end, to be teaching techniques. Development Teams might want it because they have always been told what to do. Managers might want it because it is as close as they feel a Scrum Master can get to executing control in this new way of working. Scrum Masters themselves have the intrinsic desire to be invisibly present.

Whenever a service is needed, by the Scrum Master’s observation or by explicit request, a Scrum Master assesses the service level required depending on the requester, context, time. The happiest moment for a Scrum Master occurs when teams push back for being provided with too low level services.

The service that the Scrum Master is providing becomes a mirror for the Scrum Master’s work so far. Complexity equals instability, by default. Staffing changes (in the teams and in the organization), relationships change, strategies and objectives change, technologies change. A Scrum Master keeps going back and forth, up and down through the range of services possible. A Scrum Master cannot expect to steadily provide only one type of service.

Where are you, as a Scrum Master? What services are requested from you? Do you provide services that reflect the actual maturity of the team and the organization’s understanding and usage of Scrum?

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Product Backlog and the Tea Leaves Effect

The Tea Leaves effectDo you like drinking a cup (glass) of tea? Ever had a tea bag that was torn? Spreading tea leaves in your tasty drink?

Then you know that such leaves circulate wildly and chaotically throughout your tea when you stir it, add water, or drink it. Science is somewhat more precise about the behavior of such leaves, calling it the tea leaves paradox, but let’s just stick with our more direct observations.

Floating tea leaves are best removed from the tea. It prevents obscuring of the tea, and makes a better and tastier drink. Most consumers prefer tea without such leaves. If not for the look of the tea, then certainly because it’s no fun to drink tea leaves.

The tea leaves effect is a good metaphor to understand the need to refrain from collecting and listing requirements in a Product Backlog endlessly. The tea leaves of your Product Backlog are those requirements that go up in ordering every time the Product Backlog gets stirred. They float around, obscuring your Product Backlog and decreasing its transparency, and they always sink to the bottom as the environment settles again.

Keep your Product Backlog clear, clean and tasty. Remove those features that cloud your Product Backlog. Remove those features that always sink to the bottom of what you plan for your product, and never get implemented. If those features are really valuable, they will pop up again at some point in time.

It connects to ‘trimming the tail‘ as described by Alistair Cockburn. The goal is to not build low value ideas. It sounds simple, the gains are considerable, but it takes much discipline. But you don’t want to feed your customers tea leave requirements, right?

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Courage and Accountability (go hand in hand)

Accountability, commitment and transparency are terms that frequently pop up in the context of agile and Scrum. Unfortunately, but not uncommon in our industry, the use of these terms seems to happen a lot without much reserve or consideration, out of context, from a superficial or no understanding, as self-elevation attempts by self-acclaimed charlatan-experts; and in a way that even contradicts the principles and values of agile and Scrum. Yet, despite the misuse, they can be essential and powerful drivers of behavior in agile and Scrum.

Good enough reasons for further inquiry, thoughts and consideration, starting with the observation that accountability, commitment and transparency are inter-connected and have the requirement of an important quality in common: COURAGE, also one of the 5 Scrum Values.

Accountability complements Collaboration

‘Accountability’ is the state of a person, a group of people, an organization being accountable. This in turn refers to the expectation, the ability and the willingness to share how a certain result came about in a specific domain or area of accountability; what actions or decisions were or were not taken, explain why these were or where not taken, what the considerations were, etc. Accountability has less to do with the actual result than it has to do with sharing, explaining and justifying the path leading to the actual result.

Definition - AccountableAccountability thus requires the courage to be honest, to work hard, to do the best you can, to act responsibly, to share information, to reveal reality; not the destructive ‘courage’ commonly demonstrated in achieving a desired result, at any price, cost or damage.

All too often accountability is (mis)understood as the assurance of a desired, future result, the promise of a future outcome, with the built-in threat of laying total blame with the one(s) bearing the accountability when the predicted result is not exactly or completely achieved. It is a hideous expression of a desire for command and control. It builds on a blame culture, not on a goal-oriented culture of learning and improving.

Shall we rename the false understanding of ‘accountability’ to ‘commandability‘?

The undertone of commandability is: „YOU are accountable. It is therefore YOUR job to make it happen, whatever it takes.“ It is in itself obviously disrespectful. Beyond that, in the complex, unpredictable and uncertain environment of software development no approach with the characteristics of commandability is viable anyhow. Because software development by nature thrives on emerging knowledge and facts, and ongoing discovery. It requires the ultimate superhero to live up to the (false assumption of) accountability.

Being accountable for work, a task, a goal is not a promise of a result. Neither is it an obligation to do everything alone. It looks like courage to try to do so, but it isn’t. It is mistaking courage for individual heroism. And in a complex environment, like software development, it reduces the chances of success to extremely low and even zero, at the cost of an extreme feeling of loneliness and being burned. It doesn’t work like that in difficult, creative, unpredictable work. It doesn’t work when being part of a team.

The person taking such individual expectation of a promised result seriously is likely to wander off into a personal death march when lacking this courage to admit it can’t be done alone, that it takes collaboration and help from others to live up to the assigned accountability. It takes courage to ask for help and engage with fellow travelers. It is a type of vulnerability that enables better living up to accountability.

Commandability, the falsified and perverse form of accountability, even brings about the danger of creating silos, silo-thinking and silo-behaviour; at the level of an individual, a team, a product, a department, a company.

Using inverted accountability in a context of Scrum leads to exactly the opposite of the Scrum tenets; cross-functional collaboration, utilizing collective intelligence, bottom-up knowledge creation, shared goals. Yet, accountability remains essential. The false application of it doesn’t drive out its importance. Removing and avoiding accountability has disastrous effects as well; no vision, no focus, no direction, no choices, endless discussions and meetings, indecisiveness; a Gordian knot.

Scrum foresees clear accountabilities:

  • The Development Team is accountable for creating releasable Increments.
  • The Product Owner is accountable for maximizing the value of the work.
  • The Scrum Master is accountable for facilitating the understanding and application of Scrum.

These accountabilities are separated, yet all needed. It is why these roles need to collaborate as a Scrum Team with a shared responsibility toward the organization, its customers and the wider ecosystem. The built-in tension, resulting from the separate accountabilities, invokes productive dissent, helping teams to rise above artificial harmony, recognizable as accommodation, silence and apathy. The tension is a foundation for emerging ideas and the creativity to create the best possible solution. The level of tension however is to be observed and protected from accumulating into unhealthy levels and types of dissent and (personal) conflict.

In the end, true accountability complements collaboration, not supersedes it.

Commitment mirrors Accountability

Accountability is the mirror to commitment. A committed person or team fears not taking up accountability, often it happens even spontaneously and voluntarily. Accountability works better if it induces commitment, if it appeals to intrinsic motivation.

Commitment suffers from a misunderstanding very similar to the misunderstanding that exists over accountability, i.e. being interpreted as a hard-coded contract with a promise of a certain future result. In a context of Scrum this misuse was somewhat reinforced by the past requirement for teams to ‘commit’ to a Sprint. It caused creation of the expectation that all scope would be delivered, no matter.

Definition - Commitment‚Commitment’ however was always intended as a promise to do the maximum possible in the Sprint and to be transparent about the achieved result at the end of the Sprint. In the complex, creative and highly unpredictable world of software development a commitment on scope is impossible anyhow.

So, commitment is about dedication and applies to the actions, the effort, not the final result. As such it is still a core value of Scrum. Committed people show the courage to do the best they can, to promise they will do the best they can, given the conditions they work in and the means they are given.

Committed people accept accountability. They show no fear of being transparent over the work done, the work not done, changes to a plan, opportunities discovered, problems encountered. Transparency even helps them demonstrating that the best possible result was accomplished, even when it is not the supposed or hoped for reality, whether it is less or more than what was expected. Such transparency comes not without courage.

Transparency Serves a Purpose

Accountability requires transparency. Commitment offers transparency. But transparency serves a purpose, the purpose of learning. Accountability and commitment without the goal of validated learning are meaningless. Transparency for the sake of transparency is meaningless. Accountability, commitment and transparency are the ingredients of progress, not a hammer for blame over the past. Accountability, commitment and transparency without trust, self-organization and regular validations are pointless.

Validated learning is also why work is organized in time-boxes in Scrum, as a way to limit any type of risk and to frequently learn, thereby superseding the traditional notion of failure. Scrum makes validated learning explicit via its implementation of empiricism in software development. Transparency in Scrum serves the frequent cycles of inspection and adaptation. Transparency is needed for all inspectors to know about reality, to assess and evaluate the actual, real status, and adapt to it in order to move on.

Transparency is not necessarily applicable to any sort of information, independent of situation and context. Transparency applies on all information that the people accountable for inspection and adaptation require.

Some illustrations

  • In Scrum, the Product Owner typically maximizes the value of the work by ordering the Product Backlog. The Product Owner is accountable for the Product Backlog, accountable for identifying, ordering and expressing product ideas and options. A Product Owner will have an extremely difficult time trying to do this all alone. Consulting with users, stakeholders, and the Development Team, appealing to the collective intelligence of the ecosystem augments a Product Owner’s accountability (and credibility). And it doesn’t prevent the Product Owner from having the final call and prevent being stalled in endless debate.
  • In Scrum, the Development Team is accountable for creating an Increment of releasable product by the end of the Sprint. Inspection of the Increment requires transparency over the state of the Increment, over its quality. A much used practice to achieve such transparency is the definition of „Done“. A Development Team will have a difficult time providing full transparency through the definition of Done when only allowing in what they like or care to care about. Consulting with the Product Owner, taking into account the organization’s quality standards, regulatory requirements, etc. augments a Development Team’s accountability (and credibility).
  • In Scrum, the Development Team plans and organizes its work for a Sprint. On a daily base the work is optimized and re-planned against the Sprint Goal. What is a demand to make Sprint Backlog transparent outside of the Scrum Team based on? What inspection and adaptation would such ‘transparency’ serve?
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Scrum Is A Stance (too)

-An inquiry into the expression of behaviors through Scrum-

Scrum is not a cookbook ‘process’ with detailed and exhaustive prescriptions for every imaginable situation. Scrum is a framework of principles, roles and rules that thrive on the people doing Scrum. The true potential of Scrum lies in the discovery and emergence of practices, tools and techniques and in optimizing them for each organization’s specific context. Scrum is very much about behavior, much more than it is about process.

(from the preface of „Scrum – A Pocket Guide“, Gunther Verheyen, 2013)

It is worthwhile elaborating on the importance of people and behavior in Scrum. Because, indeed:

Scrum is very much about behavior, much more than it is about process.

Introduction: the simplicity of Scrum

Presumably there are many reasons why Scrum turned into the leading framework for Agile software development during the past decade. One of the reasons may be the simplicity of Scrum. Or, perhaps it is the opposite, the wide adoption of Scrum is more like a miracle given that same simplicity.

Yet, the simplicity of Scrum is ESSENTIAL. The simplicity of Scrum reminds us of the fact that the real complexity to be tackled in software development lies outside of the rules and roles of Scrum. The real complexity resides in the specific context within which Scrum is applied. In software development, ‘context’ starts and ends with people; what people do, don’t do, like, dislike, prefer, hate; how people jell, feel and behave. The rules and roles of Scrum help people tackle complexity. But no ‘process’ can replace or compensate the people aspect of software development.

The simplicity of Scrum creates openness. It is an open invitation for discovery and emergence. Yet, the simplicity of Scrum gives rise to many frowns, emotions, reactions, debates. It is experienced as enticing, provocative, offensive, powerful, inadequate, a mystery, impossible. Is the beauty of Scrum, expressed through this simplicity, therefore in the eye of the beholder only? Or is there more to Scrum than meets the eye?

In the end, more than the rules and roles of Scrum, people have the key to Scrum. Behavior is the key to unleashing the potential of Scrum. Scrum is a stance, too.

The eye of the beholder

The rules and roles of Scrum are described in the Scrum Guide. The Scrum Guide was created and is maintained by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, co-creators of Scrum. It is the definite body of knowledge to Scrum.

The rules and roles included in the Scrum Guide can be applied and followed as described, with no further inquiry into the why of these rules and roles. They can be regarded as ‘to be followed’ instructions, merely because the Scrum Guide prescribes them.

Blindly following the described roles and rules is for many in the industry of software development at least a great start to transform to Scrum. It helps. People, teams and organizations start, learn, and improve in creating and delivering software iterative-incrementally, with small steps of validated learning. However, sticking to, not transcending, such blind view and usage of Scrum is likely to turn Scrum into no more than yet another IT delivery process. As such it still leaves many holes, gaps, disconnects and waste. The rules and roles of Scrum, as described in the Scrum Guide, in themselves might not be enough to grasp the depth of Scrum and reap the full benefits of employing Scrum. The simplicity of Scrum may be somewhat deceptive.

It helps to dig deeper by:

  1. Reflecting on the definition of Scrum included in that same Scrum Guide document,
    “A framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.”
    In the Scrum Guide this definition precedes the description of the rules and roles. This definition shows how Scrum is intended, i.e. an aid for the people employing Scrum, a way for people to structure and organize their own work. It sheds a different light on the subsequent roles and rules of the Scrum Guide. Yet, both are in the same document. Ultimately, the roles and rules described in the Scrum Guide can only be fully understood from the definition of Scrum and the clear intent expressed in that definition.
  2. Reading the description of the roles and rules again, e.g. some time after having started with Scrum. It often leads to the discovery that the Scrum Guide describes behavior more than it has technical prescriptions. A typical focus of many processes is on ceremonial technicalities like meetings, deliverables, timings, phases; i.e. on what is expected from people. Scrum is a framework that gives people the room to organize their own work, yet provides boundaries as every healthy ecosystem needs.
  3. Stepping back to a perspective that goes beyond the Scrum Guide document, the perspective offered in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. The rules and roles described in the Scrum Guide, the behavior described, don’t just stand on their own. They are grounded in the values and principles expressed in the Agile Manifesto. Ultimately, the Scrum framework can only be fully comprehended when seen as an expression of these values and principles. Ultimately, the rules and roles of Scrum, the behavior described in the Scrum Guide, can only be fully understood in combination with the fundamental views expressed in the Agile Manifesto.

The intent and definition of Scrum, matched against the agile values and principles should ground and then drive the behavior expressed through Scrum.

The Stance of Scrum

Scrum has many facets. Scrum is a framework, not a methodology. The framework of Scrum is not just a set of technical prescriptions, but a recipe to deal with complex challenges. The rules and roles of Scrum support and complement, not replace, the intelligence and creativity of people. The framework of Scrum is an implementation of the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto. Scrum implements empiricism in software development.

The framework of Scrum thrives on implied principles, thinking and… behavior, on people taking a stance to product development through Scrum, a Scrum stance.

The definition of Scrum shows the way to the core of the stance typical to Scrum. If Scrum is an operating system for the values and principles expressed in the Agile Manifesto, the definition from the Scrum Guide shows the way to the kernel of the operating system.

The kernel is expressed as:

PEOPLE EMPLOY EMPIRICISM TO OPTIMIZE THE VALUE OF THEIR WORK.

Where:

  • People are respected for their intelligence, creativity and ability to organize their own work, to self-organize. People collaborate, thereby adhering to the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto and embodying the Scrum values of respect, focus, courage, openness, and commitment.
  • Empiricism serves to deal with the complexity typical to software development. In empiricism only reality and past results are accepted as certain. At a regular cadence outcomes and behaviors are transparently inspected for new and changed insights against set goals. These insights are used to adapt to observed reality.
  • The value of outcomes, work delivered to an ecosystem of creators, stakeholders and consumers, is constantly evaluated, optimized and maximized as a shared goal. Value comes in different shapes and appearances; satisfaction, money, improvement, credibility, risk. Optimizing value is very different from adhering to traditional development drivers like budget, tasks, scope, time, schedule.

In the end, Scrum has many appearances. In the end, Scrum -like all things agile- starts and ends with people. Scrum is a stance, too.

The Scrum Stance

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A Software Development Profession

Creative, artful thinking and craftsmanship are ESSENTIAL QUALITIES for any software developer. But shouldn’t software development be about more than an act of art, a craft in best case? Isn’t there a need to add professionalism to it? Shouldn’t software development be a profession?

It is tempting to believe that software development already is a profession. After all, many people are employed in developing software, making a living out of creating and sustaining the working code of software products and services, as a team or as individuals. Many more are employed in and make a living out of all the side-activities in the wider software development industry; like funding, exploiting, selling, promoting software products and services. This however is not sufficient to state that software development already is a profession.

Some take their dreams for real and call software development a profession. For others it is more a matter of pride, status or ego to say they are part of a profession, instead of an artisan discipline. That still is not enough to state that software development already is a profession.

A profession has regulations, codes, expectations and rules, all building upon a recognized body of knowledge. A profession sets explicit expectations on ethics, conduct and behavior to be demonstrated by any member of the profession. Official exams are in place for members to demonstrate a level of required skills and knowledge before receiving an attestation, and the permission to bear an official title that is protected and reserved. A healthy profession’s regulations and standards have a purpose, a purpose that goes beyond self-serving the profession and the profession’s institute. All regulations and standards should serve to assure the best possible execution of work in order to protect the people and organizations taking part in or being subject to the profession’s activities and its outcomes, and the decisions taken as part of it.

It is difficult to predict if and when software development might transform into a profession. It seems unlikely in a short term. There is the gigantic amount of software development work, there are the endless variations of what might be considered ‚software development,’ the absence of a widely accepted definition and understanding of ‚software development,‘ disagreement over the work activities that should or should not be part of the profession.

Reasonable doubts may be expressed on whether being a profession will augment the quality of service, avoid charlatanism, etc.

Furthermore a variety of people and instances may have personal, political, career, financial or other interests in software development, possibly even outside of the activity itself. Such people and instances might see regulation as a threat to their interests. Or might see it just as a limitation to their artistic freedom. Not to speak of the difficulty in growing a body, ethics, assessments, instructional guidelines and a code of conduct that would be widely accepted within the industry.

Where there are many elements that probably impede software development from growing into a regulated profession, there are also very valid reasons why software development would be better off if it transformed into a profession.

Not the least reason is the overwhelming and crucial presence of software in society and our daily lives. Software has become increasingly vital to society. A major shift is happening. Software products and software services are at the front and at the back of many public, industrial and consumer services and facilities. Software no longer is a ‚nice to have,’ for amusement purposes only. Software is at the heart of the economy. Software is core to many, often even critical, services in the private and in the public domain; financial services, taxes, energy, retail, health care, education, defense, telecommunication, transport, the automotive industry, just to name a few. Numerous organizations thrive on software. Even when they are not software companies, their services largely depend on software.

The omnipresence of software leads to a huge demand for talented and skilled software development people. The demand for professionalism that goes beyond talent and skills is less acknowledged but equally important in the light of the crucial functions of software in society. It would be comforting to know that the level of professionalism shown in the industry grew at the same rate as the growth of presence and criticality of software products and services itself, although even a higher rate is required.

Software development deserves professionalism in doing and in managing it. Such professionalism would benefit much from being structured in a profession.

This post is one of the inquiries I have planned into the values of professionalism in software development and the potential of the scrum framework to induce the formation of a software development profession. A matter of incremental writing. I hope you enjoy it, and the future follow-ups and iterations.

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Scrum – A Pocket Guide (3rd impression)

Gunther Verheyen, Scrum - A Pocket Guide (A Smart Travel Companion)Early 2013 I wrote the book “Scrum – A Pocket Guide“.

It was published in November 2013 by Van Haren Publishing. The pocket format used by my publisher coincides with the sub-title of the book “A Smart Travel Companion” and my views of Scrum as a journey, not a destination. Scrum is a journey toward increased agility, and my book is designed as a small guide that any traveler can easily take along.

Here’s what some of my best friends in the world of Scrum said about “Scrum – A Pocket Guide”:

Best description of Scrum currently available.

says Ken Schwaber, Scrum co-creator.

The book on Scrum I wished I had written.

says David Starr, also known as ‘Elegant Coder‘.

My publisher now informs me that the third impression is about to be produced (June 2014). It is still the first edition as the content is stable. The second impression dates from February 2014. I am humbled by this success and grateful for the appreciation.

If you have read the book, leave a review at Amazon UK, Amazon.com, GoodReads or one of the other shops where the book can be found. It provides me and potential readers with very valuable feedback.

Although Van Haren Publishing has its head quarters in the Netherlands, they have a great global distribution network. Here are some sources where “Scrum – A Pocket Guide (A Smart Travel Companion)” is available from, in varying formats:

And find many more search results at Google (24900 results), Bing (1110 results), Yahoo (1140 results).

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Scrum Day Europe 2014

As from 2011 there has been a genuine boom of Scrum in the Netherlands. And it is still going on. A virus improving the lives of many people in the fascinating world of software development. I have worked with several Dutch organizations, of which ING is probably one of the biggest, one that I documented by the end of 2012.

In March 2012 Ken Schwaber, Scrum co-creator and my working partner at Scrum.org, asked whether I saw room for a Scrum event in the Netherlands. Yes, and we named it “Scrum Day Europe”. We set it up with 3 co-organizing companies around the ideas of “Software in 30 Days”. The goal was not to make it just another average agile event, so we went for a smaller event, with a clear management focus and much room for interaction. It turned out a great success, so a 2013 edition was organized with some small, incremental changes. Ken and I opened the 2013 edition with a keynote on the Agility Path framework for Enterprise Scrum that we were working on.

ScrumDay4Pros-logo_whiteThis year, 2014, will see the 3rd edition of the Scrum Day Europe event. The event is now part of Scrum.org’s prestigious Scrum Day for Professionals series. We have limited the co-organizing companies to our Scrum.org partner-in-principle Prowareness and have complemented that with a more substantial involvement of the communities. Because, in the end, Scrum.org’s role is to serve, help and facilitate the many Scrum practitioners out there, and this event is a great way to connect people and ideas.

The theme of 2014 will be “Evidence-Based Management”, on which I recently published a whitepaper called “Empirical Management Explored: Evidence-Based Management for Software Organizations“.  Ken and I will have the pleasure of opening the event again.

I look forward to meeting with great fellow Scrum travelers at the event, hoping YOU will be one of them. Have a look at the program and the speakers. Get your ticket via the Scrum Day Europe website, or directly at Scrum.org.

Scrum Day Europe 2014

Find all information on Evidence-Based Management at ebmgt.org.

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The Product Owner – An Entrepreneur

A vast majority of software development work concerns new product development. Every software product is essentially unique. We create previously non-existing products, suites, integrations and product extensions. We never create the same product twice. We expand existing products into the new product area. Competition, market expectations and technologies move so fast that acquired concepts, practices and approaches are outdated by the time they become well adopted, forcing us de facto into new product development anyhow.

Software development, as new product development through and in complex conditions, requires a startup mindset, no matter the size or age of the product or the master company. The Product Owner, as promoted in the Scrum framework, becomes an Agile Product Manager, the product’s president, its mini-CEO, an entrepreneur. The rise in complexity and uncertainty renders big plans into meaningless waste. The Product Owner drives iterative development from an exploratory attitude, aiming at incremental progress through continuing discovery and validated learning.

Every Sprint has a Sprint Goal as next horizon to work against. The Sprint Goal describes a (business) challenge, from an assumption of (market) value for the (Increment of) product. The outcome of a Sprint provides an important learning option. But the learning is only meaningful when it can be assessed against the product’s external impact and adoption; in affirming or negating the assumption of value underlying the Sprint Goal. The goal of the learning is to find out whether an opportunity is real, whether there is an audience willing to use the product, whether the audience appreciates the delivered functions.

In the absence of a release, value remains an obscure assumption. It is a major unknown and a risk for further investments. The unknown remains unresolved, and the risk is out of control, until the product is brought to market; be it a contained market segment, be it a limited or the full user base. With every Sprint without an actual release, the risk increases exponentially that the Product Owner runs out of tune with the evolving market and is wasting money, time and creativity. Increments of product, seemingly incomplete but offering minimal usable feature sets, provide the foundation for validated learning. Users need it to provide the Product Owner with feedback on the actual value of the performed work, the base to decide on the best future direction of the product. No document, design, paper document or simulation provides the same, high level of validation. Without that ultimate validation no informed decision over strategies or tactics can be taken, not in the least the decision whether to continue on the chosen path or to change direction.

Learning requires not only goals and feedback loops, but also measurements and data to support the validation process. Evidence of value is needed to confirm or contradict the assumptions. Evidence-Based Management can guide the entrepreneur and the stakeholders in their investment decisions.

Scrum can be at the heart of such entrepreneurship. Scrum frames the creativity of people to better deal with complexity and uncertainty. The empirical foundation of Scrum is a structured way to steer experimentation and discovery through frequent validation. In a situation where uncertainty is too big to plan, it is a way to make real progress; progress that is founded in reality, not in plannified imagination.

Seeing the Product Owner in Scrum merely as a requirements engineer, a requirements provider or someone to prioritize a preset Product Backlog is unlikely to help organizations capitalize on the entrepreneurial potential of Scrum. Seeing Scrum as a goal in itself results in gazing at internal performance, volume (of features, of hours, of points) and productivity (velocity or derivatives). Scrum is designed as a mean, a mean to maximize the value of software; value to the market and value to the organization and its people. Scrum is designed to make progress, grow and prosper trough validated, incremental learning. The Product Owner, the owner of the product, takes up the essential role of entrepreneur.

In today’s complex and unpredictable world, Scrum can be the engine of innovation and exploration. It is a choice though. It is your call on how you want to use Scrum.

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Happy Scrum Year

I hope your beginning of the year 2014 was as good as mine was. I wish you a great future no matter!

Crossing from one year to another is often a time for some retrospective introspections. It is a time where we more naturally step away from the daily, monthly and quarterly rush to look back and learn in the face of the upcoming times. As a result, but even besides it, it is also a good time to reground ourselves. Obviously we should retrospect and reground more often, but let’s say that this is a good time to absolutely do it.

My life has much to do with Scrum (below picture has some 2013 highlights). Here are some simple foundational aspects of Scrum I’ve ingrained over the years. They have often helped others to keep grounded or reground. These are bare basics that may seem non-essential at first sight. They have little value when respecting them. However, they become more essential when not respecting them. Not respecting them diminishes credibility in the communities, and it damages how Scrum is seen outside of the communities.

  • Stop calling Scrum a ‘methodology’. It is not. It is a framework. Note that we have even overcome the perception of Scrum as a method for ‘Agile project management’, and the Scrum Master as an ‘Agile project manager’. Focus on the software product, continuous discovery and value.
  • Stop writing Scrum in capitals (“SCRUM”). Scrum is not an acronym, nor an abbreviation. Write “Scrum”.
  • Cherish that Scrum is incomplete. It is by design. This is not a restriction nor a dysfunction. It takes away the illusive and deceptive certainty that from the method itself every possible answer, for every possible situation, at any possible time can be deduced. It actually applies to any method but only Scrum makes it an explicit tenet. Use Scrum as a foundation, and apply the ScrumAnd thinking to address your specific problems and situation.

Happy Scrum Year (2014)

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Illustrations of ScrumAnd

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.

Yes, We Do Scrum. And

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:

1. The Product Owner role

Yes, you do Scrum if you have a Product Owner. And you will do even better depending on how the role is fulfilled:

Yes, We Have A Product Owner. And

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.

  • A (business) Analyst in the role has limited benefits. But development organizations feel like securing control over the process with an analyst as Product Owner; just because it is an IT-person (‘Can’t trust business people!’). However, for many decisions the analyst doesn’t have the answer, needs to revert to product management, look at the project manager, wait for an external decision, get an upfront approval from a steering committee. Every time the Development Team is halted, must wait, pick up other work, restart previous work, park work for a longer time. No flow, no value.
  • A proxy for the business, like an account manager or other gap bridging alternatives, is slightly better. Control remains with IT (‘Still can’t trust business people!’) but IT puts a person in the role who is closer to the business, who is more connected to the business. It creates less delays, less waiting time, less hick-ups; although many of those remain.
  • Often the business gets a smell of the role and sees the fun and advantage of it, or the organization just opens up to broader collaboration. A person is sent in from a business or product management department to fulfill the role. It is another improvement. There is more direct availability of functional knowledge and stakeholder expectations. Yet, still much waiting time for decisions by the real authorities, as the business representative often has limited autonomy in his representation of product management aspects to the development organization.
  • It works better if the person is not only from business, but also has the trust and the mandate to take decisions (on the spot). A mandate is a signal that the role is taken more seriously. Often the person in the role is allowed to spend more time on it. Less hick-ups, less context and task switching, largely improved flow. The Development Team can focus more, and get things done.
  • It is great if the Product Owner is a mini-CEO over the product, a real owner of the product (what’s in a role’s name, right?), a business person with full (functional and budgetary) responsibility over the product and knowledge over all product management aspects (marketing, competition, users, legal, finance). The person’s professional life is dedicated to the well-being of the product. They don’t come much better than this.

2. Releasable software

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, We Have A Definition Of Done. And

Scrum has no exact prescriptions for software development practices. However, the empiricism of Scrum thrives on transparency. A part of transparency lies in common standards and agreements, to drive inspection and adaptation. Engineering standards are a crucial part of that. Engineering standards guide the definition of Done, give focus to a team in getting stuff done, help a team in forecasting Product Backlog for a Sprint, define quality, create accountability.

  • Development (here as synonymous to ‘programming’) is quite essential in the wonderful world of software development. Without it, no result, right? And although the importance of it is often even underrated (think of the separation of design from development in separate, upfront phases), programming in itself is hardly enough. Although code aspects like clear code, self-explanatory code, naming conventions, refactoring are very important, it is only the start. But for sure, without development (‘coding’), no progress as there can’t be any working software, the primary measure of progress.
  • Code requires testing. And if all testing is to be done within a Sprint, testing skills are required in the Development Team and testing becomes part of the development activities. Testing is minimally needed at a technical unit and at a functional level. It gets even better if this part of development can be done first, can be automated as much as possible and is performed progressively within the Sprint, not just toward the end of the Sprint.
  • The releasability of an Increment, produced by the end of a Sprint, takes a giant leap if all integration, regression testing and alike work is done within the Sprint, and within the Sprint across multiple teams working on the same product or dependent products. It does help additionally if also this work can be automated and is done progressively in the Sprint, not just toward the end of the Sprint.
  • Teams can do better if they not only have the skills, access and mandate to perform QA work in the Sprint, but are also facilitated by organizational guidelines for quality, designs and architecture. No rework arising from QA on earlier Increments disrupts a current Sprint, or must be added to the Product Backlog. It does help additionally if any QA work can be automated and is done progressively in the Sprint, if quality is built in into the product and not just verified toward the end of the Sprint.
  • Even when doing Scrum, many organizations foresee additional stabilization time to prepare an Increment or a set of Increments for an actual release. Imagine the gain if this work can be done within the Sprint. Every 2-3 weeks a truly potentially shippable Increment of software is available, that can be brought to the market without additional costs or work. A good time to start thinking about continuous delivery.

3. A Collaborative Team

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:

Yes, We Are A Team. And

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.

  • A team gets formed by bringing a group of people together, preferably -but not always- in a shared workspace. Most of them are in observing mode, are keeping some distance. Formal arrangements and agreements get made, possibly including team agreements, engineering standards, a definition of Done, team values, meeting timings. And the team formally starts following them. Gradually people start expressing deeper thoughts, ideas and concerns.
  • A team goes through some storming as the team members get to know each other better and start expressing options and ideas that don’t match exactly. They sort the differences out. At first they might take it personally only to find out later that they are not used to the others’ gestures, tone of voice and facial expressions. They find out and they build a sense of trust.
  • The group of people jells better and better. The whole becomes equal to the sum of the parts. They become co-operative, they better align their individual work with the work of the others. They adjust their individual expectations to their team peers. They find a productive way to deal with conflicting ideas.
  • The team is really starting to know each other, even share more personal backgrounds. They have grown confidence in understanding each others’ remarks, stop taking comments personally. They stop looking for blame and stop covering up. A solution becomes the goal. As there is trust, and openness and honesty arising from it, they develop shared goals and are committed to these shared goals and objectives. Individual benefits are being sacrificed for the good of the whole.
  • The team has become a smooth, collaborative unit. Everyone’s focus is on the whole. The team members have passionate debates, engage on opposing ideas, look for the best possible outcomes and get their satisfaction from being part of the group. What used to take them hours and hours to sort out now only takes them a smile and a wink.

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.