My client deserves to hear the truth.
Here’s a paraphrase of an incident that happened at one of my retrospectives:
Six months had passed since the project started. Person A had joined the team later and was still trying to get accustomed to the norms.
A: Our user stories are terrible. I never know what to test or how to test.
B: What do you mean A? Please elaborate. I’m good with the acceptance criteria in the stories…
A: We need test cases. Why aren’t we writing test cases for each acceptance criteria?
C: (thinking) Crap, our client writes our stories. He’s probably not going to appreciate this blunt disapproval.
Client PO: You know I’m really glad that we’re still talking about improvements in the project. We haven’t hit a static point where our progress has plateaued.
Important note: I was C.
Businesses practising a consulting model often have scrum teams with clients as the Product Owner. One of the biggest challenges I’ve seen in such Scrum teams is the notion of having a Sprint Retrospective with a Product Owner(PO) who is also a client. In such a scenario, how do we maintain the safe environment that we promise in Sprint Retrospectives? If the development team wants to vent about the types of stories written by the PO, should the client really be in the retrospective? Will I be comfortable as a Scrum team member criticising the client? After all they’re paying us! What if I, as a developer, want to vent about having to refactor/rewrite parts of code? Won’t the client think that they’re unnecessarily paying for code that is not well written the first time? Well… maybe yes, or maybe no. You won’t know until you try to find out. And to find out, you’ll have to have Sprint Retrospectives with your client.
Going with the purist Scrum theory, your PO is part of your Scrum Team and hence they should be in the retrospectives. This fundamental principle should not be changed depending on whether the PO is internal or external to your business. From the very first Sprint, the PO should be part of the entire process. If the team is uncomfortable speaking openly in front of the PO, that’s a hurdle in the scrum process and something that the Scrum Master should be working to remove. In my experience, PO’s who are clients usually end up lacking trust in the team mostly when they feel “out of the loop”. If there is transparency from the very first day, they already feel included. There is no “going behind my back” fear that causes mistrust when all hell breaks loose. In general I have observed that people are actually prone to giving the benefit of doubt to other people. In business, that may seem counterintuitive however, it really is what we as people do! When things go wrong, not everyone is looking to blame somebody else. It’s definitely not unjustified to believe that people actually want to find the root cause for a problem so that they can mitigate it in the future; not so that they can find someone to blame and get the dirt off their own hands. Retrospectives are the perfect forum to practice such thinking. As the Scrum Master it is my job to ensure the client PO understands the purpose of the retrospective and the Retrospective Prime Directive. A retrospective is an opportunity to improve and everyone, including the PO, should have the chance to avail it! :)
