Episode 4 - No experience required

Acme is like many companies that are trying to implement agile and are struggling. There have been many other companies before them and still many to follow in the same footsteps.

It all began one bright day when a software development manager Nick, knew that things were not going so well. He reached out to and heard about this ‘Agile’ thing. I met Nick a few times and several coffees later; he felt Scrum was the right direction to explore. 

Having read some rants on the internet, Nick was a little nervous and did not want to go all in. He decided to try it on one project first. This was “an experiment”, his new favourite word. He did not want to invest heavily in adopting Scrum, as he had not budgeted for it. 

They were not too big and about 20 smart people that built their product that was used by the business. The greater majority had never heard about agile. Some had and others and were not overly impressed. Reluctantly, he agreed to send the development team and product owner on a two day Scrum course.

The team came back all invigorated from the training with a bright look on the future. The first hurdle was that the team needed a Scrum Master. Nick did not want to hire a Scrum Master, and thought “it is a role, right?” and asked the team to self-select a Scrum Master. Nick and I had a hard conversation about the experience needed, but he felt they could handle it. All the advice I gave was met with “its only an experiment, we can deal with it later”. It was Nicks decision in the end, and I let it go.

The team debated this and collectively sounded good that everyone will have a turn in being the Scrum Master for a sprint. Some are excited by the opportunity, and a few team members wanted to be left alone to do what their craft. Nick liked this idea as it means they did not lose a person and they can still do work. The role is a part-time role, and they agree that there will be a 50:50 split of work and Scrum Master responsibilities.

They started sprinting.

“The Experiment”

Being their trainer, I received several emails with questions post the course and had two meetings with to clarify some Scrum points and guide them. Again I advised them they needed an experienced Scrum Master, and met with “it is an experiment” and “we’ve got this”. They scored a 10 out of 10 for a “Can do” attitude.

They struggled in the first few sprints as there were so many challenges. Nick had difficulties in trying to get his management and business to buy in and was frequently stumped and blocked.

Scrum had proven to be a little better. The teams felt more empowered than before and the general morale better. They felt good as Scrum was working. It was decided to continue with Scrum.

Three years later

They had grown from 3 teams to 6 teams and felt they needed to train some of their new members on Scrum. We arranged a course and taught a larger group this time along with some new managers.

A typical comment in training was “but we are not doing that” and “we can see why that is not working”. Being a coach and making their problems transparent, I had set the cat amongst the pigeons - I received a call from James saying he wanted to talk with me. 

In the meeting, he and two other of his senior people opened up to me and revealed lots.

They were still running two-week sprints

The scrum masters were tokens that arranged meetings and facilitated the standup.

• Daily Scrums were status meetings
• No stakeholders were coming to sprint reviews, and they were going through the motions
• Most teams were not doing retrospectives as nothing changes.
• They were struggling with cross-team dependencies.
• They were no longer writing significant Business Requirement Specifications with many stories, instead of using Jira and each story was detailed.
• Teams had Kanban walls, but not used that well.
• There was a development & test sprint, followed by business user acceptance testing (UAT) sprint. After UAT, it was released to production.
• Issues found in UAT were given back to the team in the current sprint and expedited to make the release.
• Overall Nick and the teams felt Scrum was better, but not of great benefit.

To be continued at a much later date as there is a good story coming

Debrief

Nicks first mistake was to think that adopting a new way of working was “an experiment”. It is a massive change for any business. Agile and Scrum is not something you can “just try”. It cannot be compared to a waterfall as the thinking is diabolically opposite. I like saying a carnivorous vegan, or militant hippie or a carefree micro-manager. It is like putting a tomato in a fruit salad; it just does not work.

Next is to ask how much value can a Scrum Master bring if they have for the first time only sat on a two day course and written an entry-level assessment? Not much as there is no experience, nor is there deeper understanding. Let us crunch some numbers as numbers work.

A team of 8 people in Melbourne will conservatively cost $52000 for a two-week sprint. There are 26 sprints in a year. Calculating two years and four teams, you are roughly looking at $10.5 million.

Conservatively we can assume a waste of 20% due to organisation dysfunction that could be corrected. Dysfunctions include

• Poor tooling
• Weak practices
• Lack of flow
• Lack of focus
• Unnecessary rework
• Unnecessary Defects
• High context switching
• Culture
• Bureaucracy
• Poor discipline
• and more

In my experience, the average waste is around 60%. The most I have worked seen and reduced is 90%. Doing the math shows 20% waste of $10 million is 2.1 million dollars. 

Having an experienced Scrum Master that could have solved these waste issues early - priceless! It amazes me as to the ignorance by management around the concepts of waste and the cost it has on their projects. Many of these managers, including Nick, make assumptions about expenses but do not realise the real costs of not doing it. 

The other mistake leaders like Nick made was to delegate the change to a non-management role and expect it just to happen. Change requires leadership and management.

A Do-It-Yourself mindset will cost a company much more in waste, and possibly introduce more waste due to wrong decisions by an inexperienced person. 

I prefer using Evidence-Based-Management (EBM) and building the hard data. Using data in your organisation will allow you to make informed decisions.

The resistance

Zombie Scrum is rampant as the market perceives that one can do-it-yourself after a two-day course.

How much are you prepared to accept and what would it mean if you could eliminate 50% waste, and for a company starting Scrum, that is very easy to achieve., I am prepared to put my money where my mouth is, the question is - are you?

How much energy do you believe business leaders should spend on coming up with a firm strategy and plan to remodel the way they work to save that kind of money? It is not much if guided and then supported.

In Episode 01, we looked at the disengaged executive. There was an organisation that had about 45 teams, that is an annual cost with the management of over $110 million. Their waste was and still is astronomical, I would say closer to 85%. For the sake of debate, assume 50%. That is $55 million waste that they are just burning. That type of data should alert any CFO.  

Agile in the enterprise is a strategic and requires respect, openness, focus, commitment and courage from the executive. Without this, that company will waste millions.

Leaders should not kid themselves and believe a significant change can be achieved with a Do-It-Yourself mindset and no experience.  

Previous episodes

• The Scrumming Dead
• Episode 1 - O Captain! My Captain
• Episode 2 - Will the real PO please stand up
• Episode 3 - Patient Zero

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