April 21st, 2013
I am excited to say that my first book Scrum Mastery: From Good to Great Servant-Leadership is due out on 1st June. In over ten years of working with numerous teams and organisations I have identified the patterns that separate good ScrumMasters and great ScrumMasters. This book illustrates these patterns through stories of my own experience and those of the many Scrum teams I have worked with and also offers practical guidance to you on your own path to greatness.
You can pre-order the book on Amazon here
Comments on the book
Mike Cohn, in his foreword for the book, said:
"Most books rehash well-trod territory and I don’t finish them any wiser. I am positive I will be referring back to this book for many years"
Roman Pichler said:
"I am thoroughly impressed with how comprehensive and well-written the book is. It will be indispensable for many people"
Tags:
Book / Mastery / Scrum / Scrummaster / Servant-leadership
February 12th, 2013
The Geckos were coming towards the end of the sprint (day 28 of 30) and were having their daily scrum in the morning. The team were standing around the sprint backlog board and were taking it in turns to update the rest of the team on what they had been working on and their plan for the day. An extract from the conversation:
“Guy & I have finished coding the photo upload feature and have handed it over to Roxie and Eve to test” Christian said “and that’s us done for this sprint so we are probably going to make a start on the ratings feature from the product backlog to give ourselves a bit of a headstart for the next sprint. Obviously we have no impediments because I’m finished! Hooray!”
Christian then... read more
Category:
Scrum
/ scrum master
/ ScrumMaster Stories
Tags:
Cross-functional / Developer / Scrummaster / Tester / Testing
December 13th, 2012
I often get asked about a Job Description for a ScrumMaster - recruitment companies certainly haven't nailed this one yet - and also do a lot of coaching of ScrumMasters. There really isn't a great definition of what a ScrumMaster is or what makes a great ScrumMaster so I started writing down examples I have seen of great ScrumMastery in an attempt to move towards a definition of what a great ScrumMaster might be. I will expand on some of these in future blog posts:
They are written in a particular format with both sides of the statement illustrating a positive example of ScrumMaster behaviour and the second part of the statement illustrating what, in my opinion, lifts someone from a good ScrumMaster to a great ScrumMaster. The
A good... read more
Category:
Scrum
/ scrum master
Tags:
Scrummaster / Team Dynamics
January 13th, 2012
As a Certified Scrum Coach (CSC) I do a lot of work with ScrumMasters in organisations who are looking to find new ways to engage their teams and move their Scrum implementations forward past the basic Scrum framework. When Coaching ScrumMasters I recommend they try to become more ADAPTIVE. As you might have guessed from the fact that the word is capitalised, it is an acronym for a number of behaviours. Following on from my blog post about ScrumMasters getting RE-TRAINED, an ADAPTIVE ScrumMaster:
Helps the team to hold themselves ACCOUNTABLE
Leads the team to DIVERGE before they converge
Helps the team take ACTION to improve
Asks POWERFUL questions to make them think about the root cause of their challenge
Encourages the team to TRY someth... read more
Category:
Games
/ Scrum
/ scrum master
Tags:
Accountability / Adaptive / Advanced / Agile Adoption / Asm / Divergence / Elephant / Experimentation / Involvement / Scrum / Scrummaster / Training / Visibility
November 20th, 2011
I'm pretty bad at twitter. I am terrible at getting my thoughts across as intended in 144 characters and the more I try sometimes the worse it gets. So I am writing this as a response to the twitter debate that ensued after Jim Coplien's latest post. My first view upon reading this was that, considering Jim's normally controversy-inviting style, it was well-written and aligned with a number of things I have been thinking about recently. However, it left me incredibly conflicted primarily because I want to be someone who is being positive and constructive to everything that is trying to help make organisations more successful through agility. This is why Jean Tabakas "Community of Thinkers" post resonated with me. I do feel an urgent need to... read more
Category:
Agile
/ Scrum
Tags:
Agile / Community / Conflict / Kanban / Scrum / Timeboxing
September 12th, 2011
Overview
The Sonics were a team about half way through their first sprint and having their first experiences with Scrum. At the same time this was their first project together as a team and, as such, were just getting used to each other and establishing a working rhythm. The ScrumMaster, Darryl, was also new to Scrum but was chosen to be the ScrumMaster because of his “people skills”. His history showed he had the ability to bring people together to work effectively as a team. Sprint planning went relatively well and everyone was relatively comfortable that what the team had committed to was achievable and the team seemed motivated by the project.
During the sprint Darryl noted that people were focussing on the tasks that they s... read more
Tags:
Daily Scrum / Retrospective / Scrummaster / Story / Team / Teamwork / The One With
June 29th, 2011
Overview
Xander, the ScrumMaster for the Blockheads team, had just finished leading them through release planning of the highest priority section of Product Backlog for the OPAL project. The team was fairly new and had little concept of their velocity plus the project was fairly complex and, after 4 hours, the Blockheads came up with a plan of 6 sprints to complete this release.
Heleena, Xander’s manager, who had been observing this new practice of agile planning pulled Xander to one side.
“Six months? That’s ridiculous. We can’t afford to take six months to get this release out.” She said
“Well we do have the option of deploying any time after sprint three so we could call this two releases really”... read more
Category:
Scrum
/ scrum master
/ ScrumMaster Stories
Tags:
Planning / Product Owner / Release Planning / Scrummaster / The One With
May 24th, 2011
Overview
Karina, a RE-TRAINED project manager, had recently come back from her Certified ScrumMaster training which had been organised just before the STING project was due to commence. She was aware that Serena, her boss, was keen for this project to be agile but was very nervous about it as this was a big project for one of their major customers. Before she went on the training she had looked at the original budget for 3,500 man days of effort over the next 12 months and thought this would be a big risk for her first Scrum implementation.
Karina had a de-brief with Serena on her return to the office with the idea of setting up the necessary structure for Scrum on the STING project. She mentioned that Scrum teams are generally optimal when... read more
Category:
Scrum
/ ScrumMaster Stories
Tags:
Multiple Teams / Planning / Project Manager / Re-trained / Scaling / Scrummaster / The One With
April 27th, 2011
Overview
Half way through the Sprint the team are having their Daily Scrum. The team take it in turns to share with their colleagues what progress they have made and what they plan to work on today. There are a couple of impediments that get added to the Sprint Backlog and Ashley, the ScrumMaster promises to pick up – one with an external vendor who is not supplying the input file in the correct format, and another with Operations who still haven’t provided a correctly configured staging environment.
The team glance at the Sprint Burndown which shows they are roughly on track and the team are about to leave the Scrum room when Ashley asks a vital question:
“Are we actually OK here? I feel worried but you guys seem fine wit... read more
Category:
Scrum
/ scrum master
/ ScrumMaster Stories
Tags:
Backlog / Burndown / Impediments / Scrummaster / Team / The One With
November 30th, 2010
Overview
On my first day coaching a new team they invited me along to their Daily Scrum first thing in the morning. They had been using Scrum for a couple of months and had a great “Scrum room” with glass walls on all sides and a lovely view of the lake. On one wall they had their Sprint Backlog, on another they had the Sprint Burndown and on another they had the outcomes from the last retrospective.
Everybody was there on time and even Annika, the Product Owner, was demonstrating her commitment to the team by being present. There were a few quick greetings before the team members stood in a circle and took turns to update their colleagues on their progress, confirming the view that the Sprint Burndown was indicating their good... read more
Category:
Scrum
/ scrum master
/ ScrumMaster Stories
Tags:
Burndown / Daily Scrum / Product Owner / Scrum / Scrummaster / The One With
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