Personal impressions from Scrum Day Europe 2022
Highlights, lowlights, and how to improve
Scrum Day Europe had its 10th anniversary, with its latest edition on December 1st, 2022. In his foreword to the program, Dave West, CEO of scrum.org, had a very fitting quote from Ken Schwaber. My summary: While the last decade has been impressive regarding the overall progress within the community, at the same time, it is disappointing that some of the topics back from 10 years ago are still relevant. A candid and decent remark!
I want to describe my impressions of Scrum Day Europe. In many regards, this has been a first for me. While I attended the hybrid virtual edition last year, this was the 1st professional physical event in over three years. It was the 1st event where I was not a Software Developer. It was the 1st time I saw several people from my professional network outside video calls. Examples include Erik de Bos (Serious Scrum & The Liberators Network), Sven de Koning (The Liberators Network) and Patricia Verploegh Chassé (Liberating Structures User Group Netherlands). It was an honor to meet so many people finally face to face!
My most important takeaway
The aspirations and challenges about agile leadership and business agility that I experience at my employer, Worldline, are shared topics among the Scrum community within Europe. That is very reassuring! Other common themes that I know from my day-to-day work life were “the complete product experience”, “outcomes over output” and “building the right environment for agile teams to thrive”.
Facts & figures
There were more than 600 participants — more than in the last three editions of Scrum Day Europe combined. The people came from 21 countries, the most Northern city being Espoo (Finland), the most Eastern Vilnius (Lithuania) and both the most Western and Southern being Denver (USA).
Highlights
My undisputed highlight of the whole event was Gunther Verheyen’s talk about “Moving Your Scrum Downfield”. This contribution had heart, brain and soul!
He chose not to use Power Point (although he had a ready slide deck which was shared later). Gunther Verheyen said everything in a very calm and clear voice. (On a side note, he could also start a second career in the ASMR scene, specifically in the category “unintentional ASMR”.)
As a speaker and behind the scenes, he came across as modest, humble and realistic. All of this enhanced his message.
He looked back at his journey of almost 20 years and Scrum Day Europe from 10 years ago until now. He did not brag about how long he has been into the game and how much he has seen. Instead, he wondered: “Where is the change?”
His talk was a call to action, asking the audience to “challenge your environment”. He also reminded everyone not to change everything at once, as this would not work, and instead to transform teams 1-by-1, creating “Product Hubs” that were focused on value, not volume.
This gem of a talk was for beginners and experienced practitioners alike. It was as a perfect bridge between Dave West’s first keynote of the day and Jurgen Appelo’s speech that followed immediately after Gunther’s. It is unclear why this was a breakout session with competing offers in parallel and not a keynote itself.
Jurgen Appelo’s talk “Versatile Organization Design with the unFIX Model” was a great follow-up and perfect for closing the day: A colorful, energetic presentation with lots of jokes. I highly appreciate that he mentioned all of his sources. An innovative concept does not have to reinvent everything. I also liked that he openly said that unFIX is fresh, ten months old and that he is looking for use cases and examples of its practical application. This look into the future was a decent wrap-up of the program part of the day.
Roman Pichler’s “Product Roadmaps in Scrum” was about a current topic at my work. The concept is already known to anyone who has read the Lean UX book. This talk contained some clear ideas on how this could be played out in practice. For me, the value was in “taking it one step further” to make it real. Roman Pichler also offered a concrete template for such a roadmap that can be downloaded for free from his website.
What I found striking was that there were very few Product people in the audience (around 20) and even fewer people using Product Goals. I take this as a sign that Product people are not attracted to Scrum Day Europe, which I consider a problem. Scrum will not work without them, without their focus and commitment.
Before this talk, Roman Pichler was already a well-known name to me. Although I never read a lot written by him, I frequently saw him getting quoted — a bit for Product Owners like Geoff Watts for Scrum Masters. Based on this recognition, he might have acted like an “I know it all” person. Instead, he came across as friendly, very likable and open to questions.
Lowlights
Wherever there is light, there are also shadows. As a former event organizer, I always look around and spot even small details that could be improved. If I seem highly critical in some aspects, it is this — and me coming from a culture where direct negative feedback is deemed the right way.
My low point was Rini van Solingen’s “Stupidity in Retrospect — my biggest f*ck-ups working with Scrum”. Swear words in titles are already not my kind of thing, but the style was even worse. It came across as very artificial, not humble as the topic would suggest, and not safe despite the announcement (making jokes about participants). I found it a thinly veiled occasion to tell how he once drove Jeff Sutherland in his car. A real open, honest and sober sharing session would have been better for 20–50 people only where you see the other participants in a well-lit room.
The other lowlight was Evelien Acun-Roos’ “The power of personal engagement. Two steps forward in professional Scrum”, but for entirely different reasons. Evelien Roos is a knowledgeable and competent facilitator, and I was looking forward to finally meeting her in person (and no disappointment here!). The topic — what brain science tells us about learning and how we can use that knowledge to be better trainers and facilitators — is relevant and the right for such an event. In other words, the problem I had with the session was neither the topic nor the presenter. It was the room that was not suited to the needs of her talk: The lightning was wrong (too dark), the seating arrangement was a misfit (one block of chairs did not invite for moving around), and on top of that, there was a last-minute location change, and there was no mic. All this was a great lesson about how the location can support or undermine the efforts put into a session.
A minor reason for discontent was the fact that there was very little networking going on (at least for me). Six hundred people in one long room, very crowded and loud, was not inviting for walking up to random strangers for a chat. The Johan Cruijff ArenA is great for Ajax & Oranje fans but maybe not the optimal venue for an active audience. I experienced some surprising usability issues: In the biggest room Amsterdam, the projector covered the upper part of the canvas for people sitting in the back. In another room, Wenen (Vienna), the whiteboard stand covered the lower part of the canvas.
Somewhere between the highlights and lowlights
Dave West kicked off the day with his keynote, “What do the numbers tell us?”. It contained many interesting bits, although it was too long for my taste. What I took away was that Scrum is increasingly used outside software development. My favorite statement was that the future of Scrum would be more about teams & products and less about organizations & scaling.
Elisabeth White (assisted by Charlie Loulakis) did a session about “The Facilitator’s Guide to Virtual Conflict”. Both had the longest journey (coming from Denver, Colorado). I found it remarkable how much American style this was, very different from the rest of the day. That is one of the joys of intercultural contacts — realizing how people can tackle similar topics in entirely different fashions. The warmup exercise showed what might have been possible throughout the whole day: engaging the audience. As a takeaway, I looked up the concept of “The accountability ladder” by Bruce Gordon.
Overall, I was a bit underwhelmed by Scrum Day Europe. It was supposed to be the best the European Scrum community had to offer. I had expected more thought-provoking, challenging talks, more interactive sessions, and more engagement with the audience.
Regarding not getting blown away by new topics, I got as a potential reason that “I know so much”. I refuse to accept this like this. It can only be the last possible explanation. There are too many fields in which I am aware I don’t know enough (yet), like psychology, coaching in general or working in many different companies.
I want to finish with some positive notes. I had some personal chats with Leslie J. Morse and Dave West at the drinks at the end of the day. That put so much for me into perspective. Dave West also reminded me that Scrum Day Europe is intended to offer many different things to a diverse audience.
There were also some very positive signs throughout the day. Roman Pichler and Jurgen Appelo mentioned that Scrum was not the only choice for the teams mentioned (for mature products in stable markets, resp. teams aligned around value streams). There was also a session about combining Scrum and Kanban. This fact shows that the Scrum community of today is open to other and alternative concepts in the pursuit of delivering value. My main reason for not attending the Kanban session was the luxury of having enjoyed a talk about Kanban by Phil Ledgerwood during Serious Scrum’s Conference/Unconference in September:
A negative thing that could have happened but didn’t: There was no selling of books and services, certifications or training via any of the contributions. At least I did not perceive anything like this. Well done, everybody.
Last but not least, some more minor elements contributed to a better experience throughout the day: There was a good flow of sessions and no sense of time passing. The presenter Bart Versteegen showed an example of “owning your mistakes” by apologizing for one organizational mishap. Drinks were served in real coffee mugs and glasses (with only some paper cups here and there). After the event, the badges were recollected to reuse them. The helpers and employees of the venue were friendly. Whenever possible, everyone talked to me in Dutch. A very valuable experience for an immigrant!
How to improve?
Any criticism is pointless if there is no possible follow-up action. Here are several smaller and bigger suggestions:
Include “How to get there” instructions on the event’s website. Even if most of the audience is Dutch, do not assume everyone knows the way. It could be as simple as that: “The closest station using public transport is Amsterdam Bijlmer ArenA. Go out, walk 200 meters, and follow the signs at the stadium to the main entrance.”
Especially if the venue is not optimized for random chats, try to organize part of the networking upfront. I have fond memories of the OKR Forum Amsterdam 2019, where there was a platform for participants to offer and request knowledge exchange for self-chosen topics weeks before the event. Even if you did not choose to make an appointment with anyone, you knew some names, faces and their expertise.
The same event had another nice feature for its program: For every session offered, indicate for which level it is (beginner/intermediate/expert). Maybe this is more relevant for a concept like Objectives and Key Results (OKR) than for Scrum. Then again, if we want the community to grow, we need to keep it open and welcoming to newcomers. And there need to be ways to grow.
Lastly, engage the audience. You had many intelligent and engaged people in the room. Use a Liberating Structure like 25/10 Crowd Sourcing to find out what the participants see as the biggest struggles with Scrum today. That kind of session would give a picture of shared themes and might inspire conversations during the breaks. It could also reveal some surprises! Measuring what is and making decisions based on what was learned is what empiricism is about.
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