The Trick to Enjoying Scrum
Lee la versión en español aquí.
Some months ago, I started working as a Scrum Master at Wolox. During this initial period, we discussed our role as Scrum Masters and how to carry out our responsibilities. We concluded that the main goal of a Scrum Master is to speed up the development in an agile way. Our main tool, to do so, is the Scrum framework.
When trying to implement the Scrum events, (daily and retrospective meetings, the planning and estimation), I’d noticed that some developers aren’t very fond of the processes. Even I was somewhat reluctant, at first. Why do we have to gather once a day to talk about what we are doing? Isn’t it a waste of time? Or more importantly, why do I have to listen to what the other people are doing?
At first glance, it seems these things don’t help us develop faster and in a comfortable way. I think the issue that lies here, is that the whole team must understand why these events are so important, and carrying out these processes should be something everyone does because they want to, rather than, because they need to. So, how can we achieve this?
Related post: Scrum Masters: Building a Role for a Growing Company
Ugh… Every day?
One complaint I usually hear is that sometimes, daily meetings are too long and require people to listen to others from another team or technologically speaking about stuff they don’t understand or know about. This is why some may think that daily meetings are a waste of time.
To improve this issue, ideally, dailies should only include members of a developing project and not be overly technical. The most important thing, about these meetings, is to know how the whole team is progressing and to set short term goals for the day, not as a control mechanism but as a way to explicitly think about what and how much we must do next. This is the key to get every team member interested in what they are all doing, and support each other.
“I have to finish this by tomorrow, lets plan this Sprint quickly”
In the Sprint planning event, we as Scrum Masters, should make sure that every developer understand the different variables involved in the time estimation of tasks to achieve accuracy. Sometimes, developers are anxious to finish estimating in order to return to their daily coding/testing, mostly when they feel they’re behind schedule.
One important role for us, is to encourage the team to see the benefits of planning through discussing tasks thoroughly, to gain a better idea of the global progress and, as a result, future actions will be decided with more accuracy. Having a finished product, that satisfies the user, is a responsibility, as well as a merit for the whole team.
Related post: From Rugby to Work
“So I’ve done this right and that wrong. So what?”
As to the retrospective meetings, some team members find it boring and somewhat useless. Having to think back to what they’ve done right or wrong in the past Sprint is sometimes, subconsciously, avoided. That is why it’s important for the Scrum Master to gather information about the past Sprint before this meeting, so as to gain time and already have it processed. In this way, team members can focus on analyzing the reasons for successes and mistakes, in order to improve from one Sprint to another.
Also, just like the daily meetings, listening to every member’s problems can be a bit dull for some people. In my experience, teams with the best communication and feeling of belonging, are the ones’ who usually work better. If the team members feel that every goal is a team goal, and not a personal one, they will be eager to listen to everyone’s progress.
Finally, it is most important to identify improvements and set measurable objectives for the next Sprint. If not, the points discussed in the retrospective meeting will dissipate, and have no value whatsoever to measure clearly, the fulfilment of the established objectives.
Really Adopting Scrum
We can use and adapt Scrum events as much as we want, and encourage its use in every project and team. However, we can’t really say that we are adopting Scrum if team members, feel that they are wasting time and/or are reluctant to do so. There is more to it than just encouraging the team to use Scrum, we must encourage them to enjoy it and to want to participate in the events. If we all understand its benefits, and every team member has a sense of belonging, we can continue to improve each Sprint and each project.
Posted by Damián Finkelstein, iOS Developer and Scrum Master, (dfinkelstein@wolox.com.ar)
