Spikes And Stories

Scrum tips and agile insights from a Silicon Valley agile coach

A Scrum Master’s Guide to Working With a New Team

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I’ve written before about how a Scrum Master can begin working with a new team, and lately I’ve been experimenting with a new technique.  I won’t rehash what I’ve written already, but it’s important to understand that my previous advice still applies:

  • It’s about them—not you—so put your agenda aside.
  • If possible, shadow the team for a sprint as a means to understand how they’re all connected together. Shadows can’t talk so stay quiet.
  • Ask tons of questions to understand not to persuade. And remember.

When you’re not terribly smart, it helps to be a good listener.

Jerry Weinberg

Set up time individually with each team member.  Thirty minutes usually does the trick.  I walk in with three topics as a means to draw them out, and today, we’ll talk about the first of those three.  In a future post, we’ll talk about the other two.  And it begins with a triangle.

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Are Designers and Developers Really All That Different?

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TL; DR: They’re more similar than many realize, and I think it matters. 

I get it why designers and devs feel they belong in different camps though. I just think they’re mistaken, and I suspect the myth began because of one obvious difference:

Anyone can look at a design and offer an opinion, but it takes a dev to critique the quality of someone’s code.

And while designers and devs use different words, their sentiment is nearly identical.  I’ll show you.  Below you’ll see the typical things I hear from devs, and beside it is the same sentiment expressed from designers.

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Start With Your Beliefs

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I’m a Technical Program Manager. At least, that’s what you’ll find on my business card, but it’s not what I enjoy most. I enjoy coaching. I enjoy helping people find the answers inside themselves instead of offering up my own solutions. After all, my teams are the ones in the trenches. They have the best information to decide what to do next so why wouldn’t their solutions be better than my own? Unfortunately, I spend the bulk of my time as a TPM and only a small portion as a coach.

I posed this dilemma to John Culter over lunch last week, and he offered some excellent advice. Stop talking about coaching. Forget about explaining what problems you might be able to solve in the role. Instead, start more simply:

Start with your beliefs.

See where your beliefs and those of your leaders align and then decide what to do next. To that end, here’s several that fit my context. A few might resonate with your situation:

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Agile Isn’t Perfect

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No one’s perfect, especially me. Or you. Agile isn’t perfect either. Everything and everyone has their shortcomings, and I believe it’s important to acknowledge them.

To be clear, I’m not talking about where a traditional approach is more suited than an agile one. No. Instead, I intend to talk about situations where an agile approach is appropriate and then discuss the shortcomings in those situations. Why? As experts, we must recognize common obstacles and sources of friction. If we can’t name them or don’t think they exist, then we’re not experts. We’re zealots, and I don’t look fondly on those who treat agile as scripture. So let’s get started.

Agile is the long play.

It’s not a rebranding; we don’t simply rename our meetings and claim success. It’s a cultural shift, and that takes time. Years even, and in a world where quarterly earnings are king, that can be a problem. Take Silicon Valley. According to data from 2017, tech companies had some of the highest employee turn over compared to other industries. Many employees were–and likely still are–staying less than 2.5 years at any company. So if both the company and its people are heavily focused on the near term, why would they care about the long play? Maybe Tim has the right approach.

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