Spikes And Stories

Scrum tips and agile insights from a Silicon Valley agile coach

Mastering the Daily Scrum

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5,000.  That’s the number of daily scrums, or stand ups, I’ve been a part of in my career.  There’s not a lot of things I’ve done 5,000 times so I wanted to share with you what I’ve learned.

First, let’s remind ourselves why we’re there.  Why have the meeting at all?  Why every day?  I like how Jeff Sutherland describes it as an opportunity to re-plan.  We know more today than we did yesterday so let’s use this new information to our advantage.  Things have changed, and we’ve met some of our goals and missed others.  Let’s chat and discuss our new reality so we can align and collaborate as a team.

With that in mind, here’s how I help teams with mastering the daily scrum:

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Viewing the Scrum Master as a Team Member

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The job of the Scrum Master can be a challenging one.  It can be made tougher when people describe the role as a “referee.”  Making such a comparison implies that the Scrum Master isn’t a member of the team.  Worse yet, some describe us as keepers of process, which conflicts with how we value individuals and interactions over process and tools.

A Scrum Master is neither referee nor process keeper.  Instead, he is a member of the team with a different set of responsibilities.  This is easy to say but not always easy to enact.  Viewing the Scrum Master as a team member requires work; however, this work is necessary.  After all, trust is vital for every team to succeed, and teams will be hesitant to trust any outsider.  So let’s talk about some tips that will help.

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The Best Books About Scrum Aren’t About Scrum

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Books like Mike Cohn’s Succeeding with Agile and Henrik Kniberg’s Scrum and XP from the Trenches were two of the first books I read as I began my agile journey.  These books were useful to teach me about Scrum, but Scrum is simple to understand.  People though?  They’re a challenge.  As Ronika Lewis eloquently put it:

The best books about Scrum aren’t about Scrum.

With that in mind, I thought I’d share some books that have made a difference in my professional life.  You won’t see the words “Scrum” or “agile” in any of them, but rest assured they’re relevant to our domain.  As a bonus, I’ve attached all passages that I highlighted as I read each book to give you greater context.

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Scrum Is Not Agile

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Scrum is not agile.  I think Scrum is a brilliant and simple framework, but again it’s certainly not agile.  It was Allen Holub in his Death of Agile keynote that convinced me of this. Watch for yourself.  He makes many excellent points, some I find more agreeable than others.

For frequent readers, I’m sure you already know that I identify as a Scrum Master.  It says as much on my business cards, and I love, live, and breathe the Scrum framework.  Still, I’ll emphatically tell anyone who will listen that Scrum is not agile, and I cringe every time I see “Agile/Scrum” on a resume or on a LinkedIn profile.

What is Agility?

The easiest way to describe it is contained in the Agile Manifesto, but I prefer something simpler.

Ruthlessly prioritize. Furiously iterate.  For both the product and process, never accepting good enough as good enough.

In the words of Ebenezer Ikonne, “Small bites.  Chew fast.”

Agile is a mindset.  It’s a way of being and a way of behaving.  It manifests itself through our actions.  Agilists deliver something unpolished and unfinished frequently.  We understand that it’s difficult for a customer to translate their mind’s eye into word.  We deliver this unfinished product to our customers to inspire a conversation about what they truly want.  Usually, these conversations inform and transform their vision, and by way of our incremental deliveries, we create a better product.

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