Tanner Wortham is a ScrumMaster and coach who I’ve quoted on this blog before. He recently wrote a blog post entitled: When Can a ScrumMaster Say No which I read with interest.
I’ve been sharing of late around the notion of more prescriptive coaching stances and, at least in my mind, this seeps into the role of ScrumMaster. So I wanted to hear what Tanner had to say.
Here’s a snippet from the article:
[…] Doing away with the sprint review simply ignores the problem. Help the team experiment with new ways to conduct the review but that align with the intent. Over time, they will find their solution. At no point did we have to say no. In fact, we should avoid it. I believe our responsibility is to understand and to guide. Rarely is it to deny.
Even so, I occasionally encountered two situations where I’ll say no as a Scrum Master:
As the instructor walked us through the exercise, he made it clear that “it depends” was not an acceptable answer. I asked if we could say “I don’t know”. And that was unacceptable as well.
It seemed that his only view of a viable answer to leadership was to provide a historical, trended data forecast. To give them as specific a timeframe as possible and lightly couch the risks associated with the estimate.
His primary driver for this position seemed to be that:
If we didn’t give them a specific forecast, they would go to someone (another team, another organization, offshore firm, nearshore firm, outsourced, etc.) that would make a more specific commitment.
I.e., that because we’re afraid of losing the “bid”, we have to provide something to win their confidence and win the work. No matter the level of confidence or runway we have in our historical “velocity-based” data.
I was talking with someone at a conference a few weeks ago and he asked the question:
What do you think about the concept of “Elastic Teams”?
To be honest, I’d never heard teams referred to in that manner, so I had to admit that I didn’t know. I asked, what do you mean by an “Elastic” team? He went on to explain.
He said that these are teams who are formed, dissolved, and reformed around business needs and priorities. For example:
If you had 3-5 teams working on a set of products in your portfolio and the overall business priority changed. Then you could possible shrink each of those teams by 3-4 individuals and assign them to another team (or group of teams) for 2-3 months.
If something else shifted, perhaps something smaller. For example, a customer escalation of a performance problem. Then you might shift members amongst teams to address the situation. In this case, it would hopefully be a shorter-term reassignment, and then things could go back to normal.
I’ve been training and coaching agile teams for more than 15 years. While I’ve seen quite a lot of unique dysfunctions, one of the most prevalent is the overall lack of trust leadership trust in their teams.
There, I said it.
Quite often I use the term “little t” trust so that folks aren’t too offended, because really, nobody wants to admit that they don’t TRUST someone in today’s organizations. At least not out loud and visibly.
But the harsh reality is that most leaders do no trust their teams. And the other, even harsher reality, is that the teams know that they are untrusted.
I just read a truly interesting HBR article that focused on the role of management versus team members themselves in fostering an environment of creativity and innovation.
Most of the discussions today in this space, at least in my experience, are focused towards leadership or management being responsible for innovation. That is – in setting up the environment
Very little of the focus is team ward. In that, the team bears some responsibility for its own behavior, energy, and focus towards innovation.
The HBR article had some survey data that puts “the blame” squarely on both shoulders – that of “management” and the “team” in establishing the right climate.
In my view, that’s the right focus since we all play a part in creating an environment of experimentation, innovation, and creativity.
There is an old, old movie called the Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman. In it, there is a compelling scene where the evil doer continues to ask Hoffman – “Is it safe?” while giving him a free dental checkup.
You can watch the scene here, if you’re up to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzw1_2b-I7A
There seems to be several things that are incredibly difficult for many folks to do.
You see it in general, but it’s particularly interesting in agile contexts. Agile Teams seem to rarely want to:
- Ask for help
- Or say, I don’t know
I’m wondering why?
In my classes I often liken an aspect of the ScrumMaster role to that of a sheepdog. That an important part of their role is protecting the team. Often the direction of this protection is assumed to be outward, for example, insulating the team from external interruptions.
In a recent newsletter (sent on September 22), Mike Cohn discussed this part of the role in more detail. He spoke to two areas of protection:
- From Management Dysfunction (external), and
- From Team Complacency (internal)
The thing that struck me in Mike’s post is the internal protection perspective, ie., protecting the team from “themselves”. It made me think about areas where a ScrumMaster can really help their teams in this area.
Let’s explore some specifics…
I was reading an online HBR article the other day about leadership communication. Here’s the HBR article –
https://hbr.org/2016/03/two-thirds-of-managers-are-uncomfortable-communicating-with-employees
I thought this might be a nice way to RE-explore leadership communication challenges. And a new twist might be some ideas on HOW to improve it.
I came upon a wonderful post entitled The Illusion of Managing People at Nucleus Insights. You can find it here: http://nucleusinsights.com/blog/?p=224
The focus of the article was away from “managing” and more towards “leading, inspiring, and focusing”.
There were three key points made:
- Nurture the culture, can the controls;
- Paint the big picture, skip the little instructions;
- Always ask, never tell.
They wrapped up the article with the following quote:
Introduction
This article has been floating around my head for quite a while. It will encompass several themes. The first being, how do we “account for” the time and focus within our agile teams? Second is, how granular do we plan for and monitor the focus of our agile teams? And finally, when planning and forecasting, should we plan at the individual level?
The “we” in these is a bit broad. I would include managers, directors, VP’s, C-level folks, the PMO and Project Managers. Virtually anyone who is tasked with “caring about” a technical team and what, how, and when they do what they do.
The Dinosaur Age
Well in this case, it’s not that long ago, but the analogy feels right to me. In this Dinosaur Age, project managers and “all management” for that matter, cared about people and their time. What are some of the aspects of that?
