Scrum mastery : Mastering empathy & biases

1. Scrum Mastery -
Mastering Empathy &
Biases

2. © Benzne. All rights reserved
2
Agile
ITSM
AI
Design
Thinking
Culture
Lean
Kanban
Visualization
DevOps
CI/CD Scrum
SAFe
XP
Cloud
Analytics
Mindset
People
Process
Technology
Data

3. 3
Anuj M Ojha
10+ years Agile experience
6+ Orgwide Agile Transformation
Journeys
8000+ People Trained
80+ teams coached across multiple
Geographies
Special area of interest has been
bringing in business agility,
appropriate mindset & enriching
Culture.
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.

4. LEARN
RE-LEARN
UNLEARN
03
01 02
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.
4

5. ‘How to sight a ‘Scrum Master’?’
Let’s Explore
5
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.

6. 6
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.
Blind Acceptance AGILE = JIRA
Because I am
certified..
Always prove their loyalty towards
agile by bad mouthing waterfall
& the answer
is always...
We are just here to ‘help’ &
‘motivate’
6

7. Year Incidence Who’s Who?
80 years ago IIDD - Iterative and Incremental
Design and Development
Developed by Dr. W. Edwards Deming
Early adopters : DoD, NASA, US Airforce
Late 1940s Lean & Kanban Founded by Toyota & Kanban is articulated in software development environment by
David J. Anderson in 2005 with other colleagues
Lean s/w development by Mary & Tom Poppendieck
1976 Time for movement in agile Tom Gilb argued evolutionary development of adaptive development iterations that
provided rapid results & more frequently visible benefits. Mentioned in his book
Software Metrics
1980s-90s • Spiral Model
• Rapid prototyping,
• RAD (Rapid App.
Development),
• RUP (Rational Unified
Process)
Developed in response to traditional methods like Structured Systems Analysis and
Design Method and other Waterfall models
Spiral Model developed by - Barry Boehm
RAD developed by – James Martin
RUP developed by – Rational S/w Corp.
1995 Scrum (formally introduced) Initial idea by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka
Formally introduced by – Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland & others
1996 XP – Extreme Programming Developed by Kent Beck at Chrysler corp.
1997 FDD – Feature Driven
Development
Developed by Jeff De Luca at United Overseas Bank, Singapore
2001 Agile Manifesto 17 developers met to develop 4 essential values & 12 principles
‘Agile’ is not NEW
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.
7

8. Ref: Agile Alliance subway map
‘Agility’ over doing agile
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.
8

9. Potentially Shippable
Product
Increment
Review
No Changes
in Duration or Goal
Retrospective
Team
Daily Scrum
Meeting
Product Owner
Input from End-Users,
Customers, Team and
Other Stakeholders
Product
Backlog
Refinement
Scrum Master
Scrum Framework
Product Backlog
Sprint
Backlog
Actionable
Items
Sprint
1-4 Weeks
8
9
10
11
12
7
1
2
3
4
5
6
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
S
The Scrum Team
Sprint Planning
Meeting
Team Selects
How Much To
Commit To
By Sprint’s End
7
1
2
3
4
5
6
P
B
I
s
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.
9

10. ‘Why they do what they are doing today?’
Let’s Explore
10
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.

11. Anti-patterns - Your conscious vices
Master of Scrum
I know the truth. I don’t know what
is the problem but the answer is
Scrum I know.. The certifications I
have done & ‘good english’ I speak
Clerk Master
Only good with booking
meetings, writing MoMs and
you won’t miss the Alarm
clock
I am the POWER. Make
me a temple
Superior than all. Manipulates
all to win the conversation &
curtained with fakely supreme
Agile knowledge
My powerful friends
Socialise with people to get in
their good notes. Biased &
power hungry.
Only Facilitator
With lack of problem solving
skills and no eagerness to learn,
you end up doing just
facilitation
Anti Waterfall
For any justification, they will
blame waterfall, other models
and frameworks. My line gets
bigger when I demean the other
lines
Aggressive
Lacks patience and complains
often. Gets anxious easily and
a poor listener
Bigotry
Intolerant towards those who
holds different opinions (or not
follow the scrum guide as
doctrine)
Self-organizing is
you-care-not-me
Asking team to find solution by
themselves doesn’t mean they
don't need guidance
Paisa Power Punter
You think that Agile will help
you in getting promotion, good
money but not-convinced Agile
works and see it as a fashion
to adopt.
Only I solve the
problem
Actually Not. You help team in
getting their problems solved.
And will approach others to also
get the team’s problem solved
Das Experiment
Misunderstanding of role and
power impacts project success
& team’s moral
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.
11

12. Cognitive biases - Your subconscious vices
Anchoring Effect
Relying too much on early piece of
information
“The team was performing well in
first few sprints and now they are
non-performers”
Availability Heuristic
Great availability of info.
makes it true
“To be credible SM I need to
be certified, linkedin shows it”
Stereotyping
Since you belong to this group,
you should be like X&$^@
“You are SAFe certified, surely
you may like bureaucracy &
structures”
Status Quo
It’s working so let it be & don’t
change
“Daily Scrum should be the
first event of the day”
Gambler’s Fallacy/
Illusion of Validity
Believer future is based on past
“The average velocity confirms
that team must finish before
time”
Confirmation Bias
Information that confirms
existing preconceptions
This team finishes the DSM in
10 min & they don’t have any
problems, I witness often
Reactive Devaluation
Devaluing idea because it’s
from opponent
“I disagree, Scrum is limited
to planned work only & can’t
be used in production support”
Ostrich Effect
Avoid unpleasant information
“Everything is great with my
team”
Belief Bias
Concluding based on
believability
“And hence the base story
should always be 1 story point”
Blind Spot Bias
Thinking yourself as less
biased than others
“PMs do command & control”
Courtesy Bias
Giving a socially acceptable
solution
“I am with you”
Endowment Effect/ Post-purchase
Rationalisation
It’s good because I HAVE IT
“CSM is best”
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.
12

13. ‘Making of a Scrum Master’
Let’s Explore
13
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.

14. First answer this..
Why they want to be Agile?
Why you want it to be Agile?
What are you hired for?
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.
14

15. Think like a consultant
Inside Out Perspective
A belief that the inner strengths and
capabilities of the organization will
produce a sustainable future
Outside In Perspective
A belief that customer value creation is
the key to success
In our context
Within organization we need to abide
with certain processes, rules, structure
and bureaucracy and still perceive
excellence
In our context
An external perspective that helps us in
understanding the many ways of
improvements aligned with market
trends that could benefit us
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.
15

16. © Benzne. All rights reserved
1. 2 word mantra - ‘BE USEFUL’. Always.
2. When you are on an assignment to train or transform, you must know the names of all the
people. It’s fine if you have forgotten them once the assignment ends
3. Always be on time. On time means 2 minutes before an event begins
4. Neven go unprepared or under prepared. All eyes are on you even when they are not looking at
you
5. Intent is to get the problem solved and at times you may just need to listen and not speak
6. If you can not create ‘ease to talk’ with your coachee, you have never begun
7. It’s Ok to say, ‘I don’t know’ as there is no point in winning the conversation
8. You are not the only wise one in the room. Be curious. Be attentive. Experience osmotic
communication and let the energy guide you
My Coaching Standards
16

17. © Benzne. All rights reserved
9. Do straight talks & stay away from pleasing business. Straight talk doesn’t mean rude. You are
not allowed to be rude. No one is allowed to be rude.
10. You are also not allowed to lose hope. They can and they will but you have to always bring them
back on track and get moving
11. You need to be respectful, secret keeper and the emotional bin of all around you
12. Practice detachment. It gets overwhelming when you need to listen but don’t judge and still
help them. Try taking breaks between 2 assignments - to steam off.
13. You may not be good in making ppt or excel pivots but you need to be great in articulation or
storytelling
14. They will forget the words you said but they will never forget the way you made them feel
My Coaching Standards
17

18. © Benzne. All rights reserved
My Coaching Standards
15. Each day is your last day at assignment. Make it the best day. Trust me, the news of one failed
assignment cross-pollinates faster than 10 successful assignments
16. It is never about ‘bad’ students. It is always about ‘bad’ teachers. Find better ways.
17. Continuous learning is a key. To learn, you may need to read, watch or listen to many things.
Keep learning till you can write it in your language. And then share it with others and learn
from their feedback. If you are not sharing what you know, it may in a way mean that you are
not learning and you may be outdated and not useful.
18

19. Wish you all the best in your
endeavors! :)
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.
19

20. ‘Questions’
We might help you :)
20
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.

21. Some References
21
Find many other learning resources for free at www.Benzne.com/blog/
Please follow us on Linkedin for updates & latest articles
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.

22. © Benzne. All rights reserved
THANK YOU
www.Benzne.com