Thoughts from a new Scrum Master at the FT
By Luke Bellamy
After weeks of gentle ribbing by my former colleagues about the need to expand my three piece suit collection before joining the FT, I was pleasantly surprised, upon arrival, by the lack of tweed and Victorian Gentleman’s headwear (I immediately regretted my pre-first day bulk purchase of pocket squares). Instead I found an IT department that I genuinely felt was further along than it thought it was, both in regards to its use of Agile techniques and the technology that they were utilising.
In what was a very welcoming, yet unusual experience for me, I was gradually integrated into my teams over a period of a few weeks. This allowed me to sit back and observe how they worked and interacted with each other before I started working directly with them, which was incredibly beneficial. This made a welcome change to the normal modus operandi of ‘Everything has gone horribly wrong, fix it’ that much of my working life has consisted of so far.
It was during this period that I observed one of the things that has most impressed me at the FT. That every team is different; with different needs, pressures and as such are provided with the room to maneuver and work in the way that they find most productive. With some teams we rely heavily on JIRA. We spend ‘stand ups’ working through the board and adding detailed notes and actions into each ticket so that we have a full record of our activities, whereas in other teams we use the classic Scrum stand up thought process of ‘What happened yesterday, what’s happening today and any impediments’.
I firmly believe that teams not having an aggressive over arching blanket methodology forced upon them from senior management has created a far more productive environment. It has also allowed us to steal, modify and bolt together the pieces of different methodologies, quarterly high level planning from ‘Safe’ with all the early doors horse trading that goes with it. Retro’s, reviews and planning from ‘Scrum’. ‘Work in progress’ limits and continuously ‘pulling’ work into a sprint from Kanban. This Frankenstein methodology (Krumbanfe??) has been one of my highlights so far. It has allowed teams to free themselves of processes that provide them with no value without recriminations from senior management, it also provides us with a healthy emphasis on ‘getting things done’.
A second point has been my team’s use of JIRA. I have found that effective creation of multi layered project/team/initiative boards has completely removed the need to provide separate project status update reports. Not having to spend my time every week attempting to squeeze information into a slide deck format which is never big enough and then assign them a context free RAG status (red, amber or green — indicating progress levels) has been nothing short of a revelation. It has allowed me to spend more time working with my teams and to focus on delivering value to the business.
Up until I joined the FT I thought I would just be delivering work. The reality is that I have been supported in getting involved in a far wider range of activities from training and being trained, to coaching, networking (coffee roulette), support and team building. I look forward to getting more involved in promoting Agile working techniques across the FT and supporting my colleagues.
Luke Bellamy is a Scrum Master in the FT’s Technology team.
