Table of Contents Foreword by Mike Cohn Foreword by Esther Derby Respected Surviving The Corporate Culture Holding To Account Enabling The Bulls**t Buzzer The Problem With Proxies Assess your Way To Maturity Tactful A Tale Of Two Scrums How Long Is a Piece Of String? The Power of Silence Resourceful Invoking Creativity Sex Up Your Scrum Be ADAPTIVE in Retrospectives The Repetitive Retrospective Alternative T-Shaped People Getting stuff “done” Review The Sprint Review Inspiring Sprint Goals Burn The Burndown? Nurturing The Problem Team Growing Individuals Or Teams? Empathic Two Ears, One Mouth Yes, but that will never work Disruptive Forgiveness & Permission Eliminating Distractions Keeping The Peace? Have BELIEF Appendices What Is Scrum? ScrumMaster Is a Full Time Role References SCRUM MASTERY From Good to Great Servant Leadership Geoff Watts Copyright, Inspect & Adapt Ltd 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable for criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Published June 2013 Edited by Rebecca Traeger Design by Ole H. Størksen First edition Published 2013 by Inspect & Adapt Ltd 96 Redgrove Park Cheltenham Glos GL51 6QZ ISBN 978-0-9575874-0-3 Dedicated to My wife Alison, my daughter Freya and my son Cody Hopefully this book will explain a little better than I have previously managed to do myself what my job has been for the last ten years or so. You are my inspiration I love you guys Foreword by Mike Cohn I first met Geoff Watts at the 2004 Scrum Gathering in Boulder. Back then Scrum Gatherings were invitation-only events for the foremost practitioners of what was starting to become the leading agile approach. Shortly after that Scrum Gathering, Geoff became the first certified Scrum trainer in the UK, and today he is one of the most respected in the world. I was honored when Geoff asked me to write a foreword for this book as it covers a topic very important to me: Lots of Scrum teams and ScrumMasters are good, but very few become great. Scrum Mastery: From Good to Great Servant Leadership will change that. Geoff brings to this book a wealth of experience—he was a ScrumMaster and agile coach with BT (British telecom) during their transition to agile, one of the world’s first large-scale Scrum adoptions. Since then, as a consultant, he has worked with large and small organisations in various stages of transitioning to Scrum. Geoff’s wealth of experience shows through in the advice he offers us here. In this book, Geoff speaks to good ScrumMasters who wish to be great. He summarizes key points by saying “a good ScrumMaster does this; a great ScrumMaster does that.” I loved this. Not only does it keep his writing direct and on point, I found it reminiscent of the agile manifesto and its statements of valuing “this over that.” A good book reinforces what we know; a great book teaches us something new. I’ve been involved with Scrum projects since 1995. And, although there’s always more to learn, most books rehash well-trod territory and I don’t finish them any wiser. Scrum Mastery: From Good to Great Servant-Leadership gave me several new ideas. For example, in writing about the sprint review, Geoff offers a set of questions that can be asked at every sprint review. These questions — Have priorities changed? Have any estimates changed? — are all ones I’ve asked before. But I don’t think I’ve ever asked all of them in the same review, and I’ve never thought of having a key set of questions to go over in each review. I’m now excited to try this with some of the teams I work. A good book is worth reading; a great book is worth coming back to. Although I’ve only just put it down, I am positive I will be referring back to this book for many years. Like Scrum itself, many of the core ideas here are simple —ensure teams have access to their product owners, let teams make decisions, know the power of silence. But there are nuances to these simplicities and I’ll be returning to the book to re-read Geoff’s explanations and tips. A good book is easy to read; a great book makes you forget you’re reading at all and comes alive in our heads. We visualize what’s happening. That’s a particularly challenging goal in a technical book. Through the numerous stories throughout Scrum mastery, Geoff pulls us in, introducing us to the ScrumMasters and team members he has encountered in his career. Just as Geoff learned from them, we learn from Geoff telling their stories. A good book makes you think; a great book gives you new things to think about. You will, of course, find the usual Scrum topics here—retrospectives, collaboration, sprint reviews, and the like. Along the way you’ll also be challenged with new ways to think about these topics, such as how a weather forecast may be better than a burndown chart and why a story pint may be better than a story point. And Geoff’s British sense of humor makes learning about it all the more entertaining. A good author is worth reading; a great author is worth reading even when you disagree with him. Do I agree with everything in here? Of course not. Too much of being a great ScrumMaster depends on one’s personal style. But even when I disagreed with a suggestion, Geoff’s writing and arguments were strong enough to make me stop and reconsider my own views. As ScrumMasters, we should all value being great over being good. Scrum mastery: From Good to Great Servant Leadership offers us plenty of advice for achieving it. Mike Cohn Author of Succeeding With Agile Boulder, Colorado Foreword by Esther Derby As Geoff points out in the introduction to Scrum mastery: From Good to Great Servant-Leadership, there is no unequivocal definition of the role of ScrumMaster. In fact, there’s little more than the directive, “do everything possible to help the team be productive.” How to do this is left up to each individual. This ambiguity is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing when it allows for creative solutions and local adaptations that are appropriate to the circumstances. It’s a curse when the lack of specificity allows old mental models and patterns of behavior to persist under a new name. If you imagine the only way to increase productivity is carrots and sticks, those are the tools you’ll use, no matter what your title is. Every team is alike in some ways and different in others. agile teams are alike in that they strive to work cross-functionally to deliver working software. Many of them work in iterations. But from there, differences abound. Some teams need to learn solid engineering practices. Others need help with a specific skill such as automated unit testing. Still others need coaching to become a functioning team. Many need help making the mental shift to working in feature-slices that fit into short iterations. A ScrumMaster may need completely different skills depending on the team and the organization. But what a ScrumMaster always needs are the qualities that Geoff describes in this book: Resourceful in removing impediments to productivity Enabling, helping others be effective Tactful, diplomacy personified Respected, known for integrity both within the team and in the wider organization Alternative, prepared to promote a counter-culture Inspiring, generating enthusiasm and energy in others Nurturing of both individuals and teams Empathic, sensitive to those around them Disruptive, able to shift the old status quo and help create a new way of working These are the qualities that guide a ScrumMaster towards servant-leadership rather than command and control. I have had the privilege of watching Geoff in action. He truly has a gift for connecting, and coaching without judgement or impatience. His insights and fine touch with people and teams shine through in the stories you will read in Scrum Mastery. Of course, dear reader, you will, and should, find your own path and make use of your own unique talents and gifts. With Geoff’s experiences and stories as a guide, you will see that a ScrumMaster is not master of the team, but a master at encouraging, enabling, and energizing people to gel as a team and realize their full potential. Esther Derby Co-author of Agile Retrospectives Duluth, Minnesota Acknowledgements There are many great people who have contributed to this book; some of them consciously and some quite inadvertently. The first people I would like to mention are all from my time at Bt where I started using Scrum in anger. The first person I would like to mention is my old boss Denis Lee (with one n !!) who always believed in me and tolerated my counter-culture ideas, trusting my instincts. I also don’t think I would have gotten very far with Scrum if it weren’t for my first product owner, mike Lynch. and then there was Sean O’Donovan who even supported me when I knew it was time to leave and go it alone. Without you guys, I wouldn’t have begun collecting these experiences and stories. Thank you. I’m very grateful for those who have heard and read my stories over the years. Some, in particular have even helped me by analyzing and reviewing them formally for this book including mike Cohn, Esther Derby, Roman Pichler and Jean Tabaka. I’m not sure they realised what they were letting themselves in for when agreeing to help but you all stuck with me. Your compassionately brutal feedback has helped me to find, redefine and refine my way! Thank you Paul Goddard should be in the list above but I want to reserve special thanks for him. He’s always been there to listen to my latest crazy ideas or create a new game with me and much of what is written here has gone through the Goddard filter at some point or another. Thank you. Possibly the most obvious people to thank are all the ScrumMasters and teams that I’ve worked with who have effectively given me the material. Some of you may be able to pick out your story and I thank you all for your openness and the opportunities you gave me to work with you. Thank you. I should also mention my twitter followers who joined in the “good & great” discussions and also helped with my efforts to choose the book design. This brings me on to Ole Størksen, a fantastic designer from Norway who had to tolerate working with my severely limited imagination to produce something that looks even better than I could have ever imagined. Thank you. The one person that I knew, without question, had to be a part of this project was Rebecca Traeger. She is a tremendous editor who put in a lot of work to turn my ramblings and musings into something that could actually be understood! And not just the once either! As the book took various forms, she helped re-organise and maintain consistency. I am so grateful that she agreed to be part of this project. Thank you. And then, of course, there is my family; my wife, my children and my in-laws who have had to put up with the many nights of me being away from home, the confusion about what I actually do for a living (“what job do you do Daddy that involves spaghetti, plastic balls and Lego?”), and the times when I have taken myself away to concentrate on my writing. They have always supported me and the decisions that I have made. Knowing that I have such a great supporting unit behind me and believing in me has made this so much easier. Thank you. Introduction - Why This Book? “There go the people. I must follow them for I am their leader.” Alexandre Ledru-Rollin For too many organisations, Scrum has been a big disappointment; a failed experiment that hasn’t delivered anywhere near the positive impact that management were hoping for. Yet I have also witnessed the great rewards and transformative power that come when a company truly embraces Scrum concepts and agile principles. What’s the difference between success and failure for organisations that adopt a servant-leader approach like Scrum? How effective their ScrumMasters are in the role. I fundamentally believe in both the power and also the humanising nature of self-organising, empowered teams and I am equally sure that the key to achieving these benefits is the ScrumMaster. Put simply, if organisations can create and support great ScrumMasters then those ScrumMasters will foster great teams and create environments that enable these teams to create great products. This book aims to give ScrumMasters the tools to go from good to great, bringing your team and organisation to higher levels in the process. I feel great sympathy for many of the people who find themselves in the ScrumMaster role as it is very difficult, often misunderstood and there is very little specific guidance on how to perform the role well. They are also often swimming against the tide of traditional management techniques from the 20th century, which are not fit for today’s age of rapid change and complexity. I look back to my early days as a newly minted ScrumMaster, absolutely loving the opportunity to help my team grow and my organisation become more effective, even though there was precious little specific advice on how to do my job well. Ten years later, after working with many agile teams as ScrumMaster, internal coach, external coach and consultant, I have been lucky to observe and work with many great ScrumMasters and Scrum teams and have learned a lot