1.
Scrum Master Lessons from
My 4 Year Old Son

2.
@ryanripley

3.
#Path15

4.
“Regardless of what we discover, we understand
and truly believe that everyone did the best job
they could, given what they knew at the time, their
skills and abilities, the resources available, and
the situation at hand.”
--Norm Kerth, Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews

5.
What is Scrum?

6.
SCRUM IN ONE SLIDE
Development
Sprint Planning Sprint Review
Sprint Retrospective
Sprint
ROLES: Scrum Master, Product Owner, Developer
ARTIFACTS: Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Product Increment

7.
What is a Scrum Master?

8.
“The Scrum Master is responsible for
ensuring Scrum is understood and
enacted. Scrum Masters do this by
ensuring that the Scrum Team adheres to
Scrum theory, practices, and rules.”
--The Scrum Guide

9.
The Scrum Values:
•Commitment
•Respect
•Focus
•Openness
•Courage
LINK: http://agileanswerman.com/scrum-values-can-
make-or-break-your-agile-project/

10.
What is an impediment?

11.
“Anything that prevents the scrum team
from being productive.”

12.
Every scrum master can be more
successful at serving their team by
understanding these 10 lessons.

13.
“A dead scrum master
is a useless scrum master.”
--Ken Schwaber

14.
It’s Important to Try New Things
1

15.
“At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and
adjusts its behavior accordingly.”
--Agile Manifesto

16.
“Three pillars uphold every
implementation of empirical process
control: transparency, inspection, and
adaptation.”
--The Scrum Guide

17.
“Experimentation is at the heart of Agile”

18.
Is it safe to fail?

19.
Are experiments safe?

20.
“Your teams velocity is worse
than the other scrums teams.
Find a way to get your velocity
up, or we may have to reassign
resources.”

21.
“I don’t care if you want to use software
to track user stories, we’re going to start
with 3x5 cards and masking tape!”

22.
O’RLY ???

23.
Embrace Learning Opportunities
(Failure)
2

24.
“DAD! Stop helping me!”
--My son, tired of me inflicting help

25.
Happy Accidents
•Thomas Edison “failed” thousands of times
until he found the correct filament for the light
bulb.
•Post-It notes were invented to replace
bookmarks.
•Kleenex tissues were originally made to remove
make-up.
•WD40 is named after the number of attempts to
get the water displacement formula correct.
These ideas were at one point failures…

26.
Not every experiment is a winner…and
not every failure is a loser.

27.
SCRUM IN ONE SLIDE
Development
Sprint Planning Sprint Review
Sprint Retrospective
Sprint
ROLES: Scrum Master, Product Owner, Developer
ARTIFACTS: Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Product Increment

28.
Is it safe to fail?

29.
“That developer is slacking.
When is the scrum master
going to take care of the poor
performer?”

30.
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
3

31.
What is the 5 Why’s technique?

32.
Often we push past the surface issues
and find more complex system and
relationship issues at the 5th “why”

33.
People do not fail, systems do

34.
Learn Gradually
4

35.
“I don’t think that design will work. You
should code the story like this…”

36.
THINGS TO LOOK FOR:
•Is design/architecture emergent?
•Are the developers disengaged?
•How does the team decide the best way to
do their work?
•Is pair programming, #mobprogramming, or
swarming happening?

37.
ADJUSTMENTS:
•Leave the developers alone
•Step down as scrum master and resume a
coding role
•Focus on guiding rather than directing
•Ask for permission to help

38.
“What does it matter how many
times I reassign team members,
isn’t that what self-organization
is for?”

39.
Words Matter
5

40.
Your words are winning hearts and
changing minds.

41.
Be consistent.

42.
Following through isn’t optional.

43.
Following through isn’t optional.

44.
“Teams ship working software
at the end of each sprint. That’s
why we implemented scrum.
Work the weekends if you’re
behind. The team needs to
deliver on their commitments.”

45.
What about the word “Agile”?

46.
Communication is your greatest tool. How
you frame discussions WILL make or
break your agile transformations and
projects.

47.
Sustainable Pace Is Important
6

48.
“Agile processes promote sustainable
development. The sponsors, developers,
and users should be able to maintain a
constant pace indefinitely.”
--Agile Manifesto

49.
Sustainable pace is a quality play
•Burned out developers deliver bad code
•They also find better jobs

50.
Sustainable pace is a productivity play
•Continuous integration, automated
testing, skill building, and whole team
understanding become important when
long hours are not an option

51.
Sustainable pace is predictable
•Over a period of time, the amount of
work that a scrum team - working at
a sustainable pace - can accomplish
will become consistent

52.
Sustainable pace is humane

53.
“Your team leaves at 5:00pm
and refuse to work weekends.
Why don’t they have a sense of
urgency?”

54.
Watch value, not the clock…

55.
Play Well With Others
7

56.
“How inclusive is your team?”

57.
“That’s not how it’s done! Here, let me
show you the “right way” to be agile…at
2am.”

58.
ARE YOU A HERO?:
•Team seeks your approval before acting
•Team asks about the “right way” to do Agile
•Are you insisting on “correct” solutions?

59.
THINGS TO CONSIDER:
•Resist the urge to solve the teams problems
•Get comfortable with awkward silence
•Focus on relationships

60.
BEWARE LEARNED HELPLESSNESS
Helplessness can lead to overlooking
opportunities to improve

61.
Time Box Events
8

62.
A time box is a fixed period of time to
perform an action or to achieve a
goal.

63.
SCRUM IN ONE SLIDE
Development
Sprint Planning Sprint Review
Sprint Retrospective
Sprint
ROLES: Scrum Master, Product Owner, Developer
ARTIFACTS: Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Product Increment

64.
Prevents over-investment in activities

65.
Promotes a focus on value

66.
Minimizes cost and impact of errors

67.
Be Kind
9

68.
??????
AGILE IMPACTS EVERYONE
• Organizational Change
• Leadership Change
• Team Change
• Status Change
• Job Description Change
• Role Change
• Culture Change

69.
WARNING SIGNS:
•Arguments – “What has to be true…?”
•Emotional outbursts
•Am I talking to the team or at the team?
•Your feelings – “Am I enjoying my role?”

70.
ARE YOU BEING KIND?
•Take time to reflect on difficult exchanges
•What is motivating you?
•Anxiety, fear, or frustration
•Address the “friction” in the retrospective
•Ask the team for feedback and support

71.
It’s hurts to grow…literally
10

72.
“A project manager could maybe
become a tester...maybe.”
--Ken Schwaber

73.
“500 YARDS OF FOUL-SMELLING MUCK”
--Red “The Shawshank Redemption”
The PMP® to CSM® pipeline…

74.
We are telling people to
give up the tools, methods,
processes, and behaviors
that have made them
successful.

75.
INSPECT:
•How the team manages their work
•Focus of Daily Scrum meeting
•Unsolicited advice
•Interrupting progress to pontificate

76.
ADAPT:
•Questions over statements (2:1 ratio)
•Make failure an option – and then fail
•The team owns tasks and solutions
•Ask for permission to help

77.
Learn to be introspective

78.
http://agileanswerman.com
ryan@agileanswerman.com
@ryanripley
Podcast available on iTunes,
Stitcher, and
AgileAnswerMan.Com

79.
IMAGE ATTRIBUTION
“Broccoli” - ©Julia Frost – Flickr.com – Creative Commons License
“Singleton Bank Rail Crash” – Public Domain
“Soap” - ©Frankleleon – Flickr.com – Creative Commons License