The ScrumMaster Files: Product Owner to Co-Product Owner, do you copy?
Pat and Paul have made the announcement to the Development Team, to you, the ScrumMaster and to the Organization, that going forward they will be Co-Product Owners for the initiative kicking off with this release.
Pat and Paul have made the announcement to the Development Team, to you, the ScrumMaster and to the Organization, that going forward they will be Co-Product Owners for the initiative kicking off with this release.
Paul is a newer employee to the organization but has lots of drive and subject matter expertise. Pat is very senior in the company. Her judgement is trusted and she is respected by all levels of the organization.
As the Development Team begins working with the “Co-Product Owners”, there appears to be lots of confusion.
Pat and Paul get their wires crossed in terms of who is expected to be at Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, Sprint Reviews and Sprint Retrospectives. Sometimes neither of them attends and you have to try to chase them down or the Development Team is left to guess in terms of what the work priority is or what “done” looks like for backlog items.
Sometimes they both show up. When questions are raised, everyone looks to Pat, the more senior P.O., to answer questions. Even when questions are asked directly of Paul, he looks to Pat before he answers.
Pat and Paul also lose track of who is supposed to be developing Definition of Done on Product Backlog Items, ordering Product Backlog Items based on stakeholder and user interaction and discussions so that items are ready for the Development Team to commit to at Sprint Planning.
This initiative is 3 Sprints in and there is nothing considered “done” or acceptable for the new product. The stakeholders and leadership are starting to say things like “I thought Scrum meant delivering value faster. Why isn’t it working?”
You are the ScrumMaster in this situation.
What would be your first step in correcting the dysfunction? What are your coaching opportunities for the Product Owners? The Development Team? The Organization?
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Agile Family Guy
May has been dedicated to Collaborative Leadership Team graduates and their Scrum stories outside of their “day job”. We close this month with Paul Carter’s “Agile Family Guy”. Enjoy!
May has been dedicated to Collaborative Leadership Team graduates and their Scrum stories outside of their “day job”. We close this month with Paul Carter’s “Agile Family Guy”. Enjoy!
January 17, 2014: life changed forever as baby #6 arrived to disrupt the tranquil Carter household. Ok. Not exactly tranquil. Disorganized chaos is closer to reality. 5 kids: sports, academics, scouts, and church were running us ragged.
With our new arrival, a light bulb came on! I’d had success as a Scrum Master and Agile Coach & Trainer since 2008. Why don’t I practice what I preach in my personal life? And the Agile Family Guy was also born!
What does an Agile family look like? Daily Scrum at 7:00 AM. Sprint Planning and Retrospectives on Sunday afternoons. User story workshops periodically and quarterly release planning. Agile Parenting 101: there is no other way. I’ve trained 500+ in agile boot camps and surveyed every attendee with a teen age child. Would you believe that I have not run into a single parent who had a Working Agreement and shared Definition of Done with their teenager? The conversation typically goes like this:
Me: “Have you ever asked your 15 year old to clean their room?”
Class Attendee: “Yes.”
Me: “When they said it was done, was it really done?”
Class Attendee: “Not a single time.”
Me: “That is because you didn’t have a story with good acceptance criteria and input from the Product Owner. Have your children write stories for the household chores backlog and have them consult with the Product Owner so that they understand what done looks like. Then hold a Sprint Review for the Product Owner, and other stakeholders, to provide feedback.
My spouse was skeptical when I wanted to introduce Scrum to the family. She came back home from an out of town event to a storyboard on the wall and a completed Sprint 1. She was definitely a fan of the results!
In the early stages of our Agile adoption came home from work to find the word “DOLL” on a sticky note in the impediment column. My 5 year old daughter proudly pointed out a loop hole in Scrum. She remembered that impediments prevent her from reaching her commitments. I was proud of her too… but continued her education. “Kelsi, I see you have an impediment.” “Yes, Daddy. I was distracted by my dolls and could not get any work done. I was impeded.” I replied, “Let me share with you what a ScrumMaster does…they remove impediments!” Her eyes grew to the size of saucers. Funny thing, there has been no doll impediment raised by Kelsi since.
By using Scrum outside of I.T., I have discovered that Scrum is agnostic to the type of work it is applied to. I have been able to now help operations, legal, compliance, H.R., sales and marketing teams learn to use Scrum to increase productivity to work on the right things that provide the most value for their business.
This weekend my son gave the Valedictorian speech and closing remarks at his high school graduation. He would be the first to say that Scrum helped immensely to receive this achievement and plans to continue his agile journey as he starts college. Stay tuned for more stories from the Agile Family Guy!
Paul Carter is an Agile enthusiast with a passion for developing cross-functional, collaborative teams to iterate work that delivers real value. He is an advocate for using agility as an enterprise business strategy, transforming individuals, teams and departments across an enterprise including I.T., sales, marketing, legal, H.R., and operations.
Paul works within the community teaching religion classes to high school students and is actively involved in youth programs. He is married with 6 children and enjoys roller coasters and water parks. He is known among his peers as the Agile Family Guy: using agile practices to keep the home organized and productive!
Click here to view our upcoming classes and register for our next CSM or CSPO course.
The ScrumMaster Files: A Ticket to Ride?
You sit sipping your coffee as you prepare for Sprint Planning that will take place later this morning. As you review the calendar for the next two weeks, Ted and Janine, two of your team members approach. Ted has been reluctant in adopting Scrum and Agile.
You sit sipping your coffee as you prepare for Sprint Planning that will take place later this morning. As you review the calendar for the next two weeks, Ted and Janine, two of your team members approach. Ted has been reluctant in adopting Scrum and Agile.
Janine has been one of the strongest proponents of adopting Agile and Scrum in the organization. They stop at your desk with Ted opening the discussion, “Do you have a minute to chat? We have a question that we need answered prior to planning this morning.”
You reply, “Sure, go ahead” grabbing your notebook. Janine continues, “Well, it’s actually more of a debate that we need you to help settle, I told Ted that we don’t need to log any support tickets anymore since we’re Agile. Instead, we should just add these items to the backlog and let them be ordered with the rest of the work.”
Janine goes on to describe how adding support to the backlog will allow, Pete, the Product Owner to order these items against all of the work that he is identifying for the Team. Ted interrupts Janine at this point – “Pete isn’t really around that much Janine. He pretty much delegates everything to you and Jim.”
“I know, but that’s really not a problem, Ted,” replies Janine. “Jim is decisive, understands the business – Pete loves being known as the ‘Product Owner’ but doesn’t really act like one. As long as we have Jim we are okay”.
“I don’t know” replies Ted, “Maybe we should ask Greg, the Executive Sponsor, to weigh in. He is the one that asked Pete to be the Product Owner”.
Janine, indignant at this last comment, “Ted – we are a self-organizing team and Scrum states that there are no managers in Agile, so why talk to Greg?”
With brow furrowed, Ted asks you, the ScrumMaster, what to do.
- As the ScrumMaster, how would you respond to Ted and Janine?
- Are there any questions you would ask?
- Is there anything that you need to teach regarding the Scrum framework?
What would you do next?
Enter your response in the comments section below.
Flipping a House with Scrum
Flipping a House with Scrum? Can you really do that? Collaborative Leadership Team received an email from Tom, one of our Minneapolis graduates while he was in the process of doing just that.
Flipping a House with Scrum? Can you really do that? Collaborative Leadership Team received an email from Tom, one of our Minneapolis graduates while he was in the process of doing just that.
Tom writes:
“I was working with our friend Reuben today to show him a house rehab project I have going in Christian’s part of town. It is a pretty basic rehab of cosmetic items. Goal is to have it back on the market in 4 weeks and staying in a $6K budget. “Done” is when truth in housing inspection is done with no findings of “repair or replacement needed”.
I am the product owner and I walked my work crew through our backlog process. In the photo you can see the two sets of stickies to the left are the backlog items. We are running one-week sprints with a review and retrospective every Wednesday morning (at which time the crew gets another 25% of their fee). There are items that will be added with my name or inspection items that I need to review before continuing with the activity (i.e. paint samples must be approved before completing the entire interior of the house.)
The contractors were a bit skeptical at first with a “this guy is full of $hit look on their face”, but when I explained to them how this is going to help them know exactly what needs to be done and when to ask me for clarification, they slowly came around and the committed to giving this a try.
I will take weekly pictures to track progress. I am going to put this together as a case study on SCRUM outside of IT projects. I know it isn’t building a car from scratch, but I have to walk before I can fly.
I just wanted to let you know that THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!! I am very excited about this experiment. Please let me know if your SCRUM expertise has any coaching for me.
~Tom, 2014 Certified ScrumMaster graduate
Tom just posted the entire story with pictures on his own site. Check it out here:
http://www.auldllc.com/SiteAssets/Pages/CurrentPropertiesandFlipExamples/AldrichFlipSCRUM.pdf
Want to gain the skills and knowledge that Pauline and Tom did? Click here to view our upcoming classes and register for our next CSM or CSPO course.
What is Agile?
That’s not Agile! So what? A common phrase we hear at our coaching clients or in Agile and Scrum training classes is “But that’s not Agile!” As Agile and Scrum coaches our answer is “So what?” Angela Johnson, Certified Scrum Trainer shares perspectives on the defenses and disconnects that this phrase causes. What is Agile?
That’s not Agile! So what? A common phrase we hear at our coaching clients or in Agile and Scrum training classes is “But that’s not Agile!” As Agile and Scrum coaches our answer is “So what?” Angela Johnson, Certified Scrum Trainer shares perspectives on the defenses and disconnects that this phrase causes. What is Agile?
When the phrase “that’s not Agile” is used as people are trying to work together in a new and different way than they have traditionally worked, the walls go up. Many are immediately defensive and respond with things like “what does that even mean?”
As a neutral coach who has intervened in these conversations, I ask people to take a step back. I then start with this: “When you say ‘that’s not Agile’ do you really mean that the organization has asked you to try working in an Agile way but continues to behave in ways that contradict this?” The answer is almost always a resounding “yes!”
Rather than scare people with the “A-word” or raise defenses with new vocabulary terms, we have to remember individuals and interactions and just talk to each other.
This conversation usually leads us straight to why. Why do you want to adopt Agile or Scrum? What does your organization hope to gain out of working in this different way?
Many do not even realize that they are reverting back to their old ways of working but using new vocabulary. For those who have crossed the chasm and have fully embraced this new way of working, it can be very frustrating when the very organization that asked them to do this responds with working the same old way they always have worked.
This is why the role of the ScrumMaster is so very important in any Scrum adoption. They are the “personal trainer” who is there neutrally facilitating these tough conversations and reminding us of the real goals that the organization has set. If the organization has chosen Agile or Scrum as a means to achieve those goals, it is the Scrum Master who gets everyone back on track when that muscle memory kicks in dragging us back to our comfort zones and old ways of doing work.
Want to learn more about how a Scrum Master can help break through these walls? Click here to view our upcoming classes and register for our next CSM or CSPO course.