LETTER FROM A CERTIFIED SCRUM MASTER NEEDING URGENT HELP
Adrian Lander -Agile Practitioner, Coach, Board Advisor, Author
Independent Professional-, Agile & Senior Management Coach | Trusted Advisor | Founder & Co-Author Agnostic Agile (NPO) | Co-Founder & Co-Author Agile 2 | Change Catalyst | SW Developer | 15K+
Dear Adrian,
Sorry for bothering you. I need your help urgently. A peer told me you helped her deal with some serious Scrum issues. I tried my trainer, but he said he was traveling to new courses and told me to Scrum on.
I achieved my Scrum Master certification. It felt great. Such an achievement. Getting a Master's in 2 days. This is accelerated value, I thought. We did games and everything. So liberating. Such a relaxed, fun time away from work. I never needed to think.
Now, I just started working with a real team, as their Scrum Master, and we got the following issues.
How to deal with requirements? We got requirements coming, but we don't know how to deal with them. The Dev team is looking at me, as their Scrum Master. Expecting mastery. I recall from my certification that we need to list them, somehow.
Do we create a document per requirement?
Do we track changes against them?
When do we estimate them?
I heard most agile teams use user stories - but that was not covered in my certification?! Is it a Scrum-but? It must be.
One team member was asking for a product vision. What is that? It sounds too much upfront - my trainer told me to avoid anything upfront. If it is not a sprint, it does not exist, he told us.
And how do we deal with architecture?
As we should, we just started sprinting and selected the recommended 2 week's sprint - luckily that was covered. I got one thing right (I hope).
But next Wednesday, we get our sprint review, and actually most of the team is still waiting for log ins to a dev environment. Test environment has not been set up yet. I guess we may end up moving testing to the next sprint.
Oh yes, and what should I report? Nothing has been burning down so far, apart from maybe some developer and PO motivation. We could report on log in status. What do you think? Or motivational impediments. Must be a dysfunctional Scrum-but environment!
Still happy about my cert of course, as it brought me into this project - that was the only thing they looked at - and increased my rate.
But my first week has not been very sustainable.
I have tried "Scrum is hard", "You do not understand Scrum", "You are Scrum-butting", "Scrum is a framework", "I am working full-time on impediments" and "Let the Team decide", and I semi got away with that, but as said we haven't got anything done yet. Now, some Scrum gurus say that you are not doing it right unless 50% of the sprints fail. So maybe this is just fail fast.
Now, as my trainer told us, this is all agile, and complexity thinking and science. So, I guess we will just use empiricism (?) to load the next sprint? Maybe test environment set up? Or an attempt to that. It is all learning, I guess.
Seriously looking forward to your help,
Yours sincerely,
Angie.
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Dear Angie,
You raise a lot of issues.
No, I am not training. I am actually working with a real client and their customers producing a real product.
Let me get back to you in the next 24 hours.
Best regards,
Adrian
Enabling software development teams to be more effective through Servant Leadership
5 年Thus the danger of two day certificates where you only have to get 60% on the final to pass.
Helping delivering change that matters, with people that care
6 年Lol.? I suppose trying to be serious,? There should be a buddying and support model so that new agile coaches work with a more senior mentor for a good while then gradually "fly" themselves.? I suppose a model called "coaching"???? So the company seeking to introduce agile ways of working engages an experienced coach with? an auditable track record of success,? they pay the right rate for this experience,? they have a flexible contract so the individual can provide mentoring, coaching and interventions on an as needed basis rather than a full time rolling 3 month contract,? the internal staff seeking to become coach/agile delivery folks are mentored and tutored until they are confident (they can even go on course to get accredited if they want to).?? Eventually the internal agile coach is confident to start themselves, and the continue to know they can call their mentor/coach for advice in challenging situations - ie they're part of a strong support community.? The senior coach ends up with a portfolio of clients who value their insight. Perhaps after a few years of working in the company they decide to try their hand at being an independent practitioner and then history repeats. Such a radical idea!!!!!!