Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology

Whatever it takes to lead a team, build a product, and run a business

Tag: scrum

  • Is a ScrumMaster of Any Value?

    Tobias Mayer, who I respect very much, recently put his thoughts about ScrumMasters into a blog post. The post that can be summarized best by its title: Delete [ScrumMasters]. The strongest point of the post goes as follows:

    “I believe the concept of ScrumMaster has done more damage to our industry than it has aided in change. It has been a way for individuals and organizations to jump on the Agile band wagon, in a mostly painless way (discounting severe certification costs) and continue to do much as they were doing before.”

    It isn’t a surprise for me that the post gained a lot of traction. Many experienced leaders in our community have quickly supported Tobias’ crusade.

    I haven’t.

    I agree with vast majority of what Tobias has written. I like the diagnosis he makes. I even believe we should be told such things by our thought-leaders. Yet I don’t jump on the bandwagon of spreading the epiphany: we don’t need ScrumMasters anymore.

    One of stories that instantly pops into my head whenever I hear about the role of ScrumMaster is the one John Cieslik-Bridgen, who used to be a ScrumMaster at Lunar Logic, shared with me once:

    “We were doing a “design your ideal team” exercise. In this exercise, I liked the fact that I wasn’t referred to as a ScrumMaster, rather ‘a John’, as in, “we’ll need ‘a John’”. I think the use of the word “coach” much better reflects what I try to do.”

    On a side note: I’d love to have “a John” as a title on my business card someday. After all, many teams need a John.

    By this point you may wonder, which part of Tobias’ post I haven’t understood, as the story is totally aligned with the article. Well, I have understood the post. John’s story, however, is just one side of the coin.

    The other is that few organizations are mature enough to hire, or promote, a John. Conversely, many companies lose their Johns, these great coaches and counselors, because they don’t have a named place for them. What’s more, organizations often need some kind of framework to even allow a role of a John. This framework very often happens to be Scrum and the role is called ScrumMaster.

    I don’t say it is a magic pill that solves every problem in an organization. I just say this step is often very helpful in moving to the next level for both the org and for a John.

    And yes, I can think of other, arguably better, means to an end of organizational and personal improvement, but I find this one working surprisingly often. To quote Tobias once more: “Sorry guys, it’s what I see.”

    I actually see much value if a John blossoms and eventually leaves the organization because it just scratches the surface and doesn’t really introduce agile values. At the end of the day we still have one more great guy on the job market.

    While I agree with the argument that the ScrumMaster role is often abused and I don’t really like how it is defined, I still consider it one of the valuable options for organizations. The option that may end in preservation of status quo, but also in creating a space for people who will take the org to the next level.

    Does it mean we should throw away the role as a whole? Well, in mature organizations, where there is a good understanding of the reasons that ScrumMasters were introduced and what they are supposed to do, I see no reason to cultivate the role or the title.

    On the other hand I still see the ScrumMaster role as a tool that can create space for change agents (I hate this name too) and catalyze improvements. After all, would there be a John without a ScrumMaster first?

    Have I just written a post in defense of the ScrumMaster role? Oh well…

  • On Agile Once Again

    There was said a lot in the old rusty discussion on being agile versus doing agile, The Only Right Mindset, etc. Same with lean but on a smaller scale I guess. In all these discussions I always try to be on common sense side.

    I mean I somehow missed the moment when agile became a major religion and lean a minor one (for the time being), but evidently it must have happened as I see lots of worshippers around. People who know the one and the only way of doing things. People who believe in this or that method. Me? I don’t buy it.

    I will support most agile and lean initiatives I see out there, but it is not because they suit to my perfect picture of the world. It is so because applying Scrum or Kanban, even by the book, is still an improvement for majority of teams. By the way, pardon my “Kanban by the book” as there is no such thing, but definitely there already are beaten paths leading to Kanban adoption so it wasn’t vast oversimplification.

    Anyway, whenever I’m talking with a team about methods I don’t object adopting old-school formal waterfall-like approaches, pardon my French. On occasions I may even advise sticking to them.

    And if you ask me, this is exactly being agile.

    It’s easy to criticize a team which is following a heavy process. The Manifesto says “people over process,” so you’re doing it wrong! But wait, aren’t that people who enforced (or asked for) this process? Are we really that fixed if we can consume changing requirements and still deliver, despite our heavy process? And most of all, isn’t Scrum (to take the example from the top of my head) a pretty formal process as well?

    We are far beyond the point where you could get away with simple labels like “Scrum means agile.” We know more, we understand more and most of all we have hell lot of examples of good, bad and ugly things done under the agile banner.

    If I see a team that has a very formal process enforced by their client and they are doing very well, yet they still look for occasions to reduce the burden of formalities while sustaining the quality I see agile. I see it even if the only practice from Scrum handbook they follow is daily standup. I see agile even if, at the first look, most of people would rate them “hard-core waterfall.”

    On the other hand, when I see a team applying Scrum, Kanban or whatever they believe is the next big thing, and they are doing it blindly, without understanding how the damn thing works, why it works and how it even applies to team’s specific situation I don’t see even a bit of the message which started it all.

    You can say that I oversimplify things. Maybe I do. Yet this approach works for me. This is a lesson I got from jumping on Kanban bandwagon. Kanban is vague enough that the simple message that a team is using the method tells you almost nothing. At the same these few simple rules, which come in variety of flavors, usually bring pretty good results. If you understand what you’re doing, that is.

    You don’t need strict and specific rules to make it work. You just need understanding of the tool you use.

    This is pretty interesting observation as I happen to be part of program board on different agile/lean events and I still see many proposals trying to go through with the message about the ultimate way of doing things. Wake up! We’re past this point for some time already. We don’t need oracles. We need practitioners sharing their ups and downs, successes and failures, and most importantly deep understanding what they are doing, why, and how comes that it happens to work.

    And by the way if you happen to suit this picture somehow I encourage you to submit your proposal to the ACE Conference – the event I can honestly recommend. We still look for a handful of speakers to share their knowledge and experience. Besides, Krakow in late spring/early summer is a really nice place to visit.

  • Scrum versus Kanban

    These days every blog discussing agile topics should have a big hairy article on Scrum versus Kanban, so here it is. Well, just joking. Actually many people, way wiser than me, approached that subject some time ago already presenting different arguments. If you want to hear some of the strongest opinions out there check Ken Schwaber’s post on how Scrum is good and Kanban sucks. If you look for more weighted opinion David Anderson shared one. Just recently Mike Cohn also added very reasonable two cents to the discussion even though he actually doesn’t agree with David.

    Also there’s been a lot written about Scrumbut and Scrumban. I don’t see the point in repeating once again that if something works for your team – go for it, no matter if that breaks the orthodoxy of the method of your choice.

    Note: I’m well aware that until now I just share what I’m not going to write about. Is this post is going to be just a set of links to some good articles though? No, not exactly, but please do check mentioned articles – they’re a piece of good reading. Anyway, to the point. There’s one thing which is often mentioned as one of main differences between Kanban and Scrum but I think this is the core of the whole this versus that thing.

    The point

    From pretty much every Scrum and Kanban comparison you’ll learn that introducing Scrum is a revolution while with Kanban it is rather evolution. You’ll also be pointed that both approaches foster improvement. Now, finally, after all that beating around the bush: my point here is how Scrum revolution differs from Kanban evolution in terms of introducing improvements and why it is so.

    Team model and software development process

    Let me start with something I was learning for quite a long time (no, I’m not that bright to catch it during the first class):

    Scrum proposes pretty damn good team model and process for building software.

    If you look for model team which would work in majority of situations go for a Scrum team: cross-functional, small and tightly-integrated. If you look for healthy approach to software development you can’t really go wrong with Scrum. Scrum is well-thought and well-weighted approach. No surprise it ruled the agile world.

    On the other hand Kanban tells you that your team model is good for now, no matter how it is organized. And your process of building software is OK even if it’s pretty chaotic. For now.

    Kanban doesn’t propose any specific team model or software development approach.

    It basically means that you get no hints whatsoever how the well-organized team would look like. Nil. Nothing. Find out by yourself. No help here. Well, almost.

    The difference

    When organizing Scrum team you can basically turn your thinking off. Well, sort of. It’s all in the book. Someone took the effort to propose team model which I’ve just labeled “pretty damn good.” Same with the process you’re meant to follow.

    Kanban chooses the other approach: we don’t know what optimal solution for your team is. Here’s some help but you’re going to learn it by yourself.

    The difference? Pretty damn good doesn’t automatically mean optimal. Scrum is optimized for majority of teams, not for your unique group. Yes, of course, Scrum has improvement mechanisms, retrospective being the flagship here, but in terms of general rules it stays unchanged.

    Kanban accepts that starting point may be way worse than in Scrum case but leaves you all options open. You aren’t really constrained with specific practices or models. What you’re going to end up with is totally on you and your team.

    Help you get

    You can put it in other words if you prefer. Scrum tells you how you should change, at least to some point. Scrum is like your mother-in-law – she always knows that you suck here and there and how exactly you should act to be um… better.

    Kanban on the other hand is like your friend, close but probably not the best one you have. He’ll try to show you where you could improve but won’t state it explicitly. It’s just not that kind of relationship. It will be rather a set of hints and smoke signs – it’s you who chooses to use them to change yourself or just ignore them.

    Which one is better

    Neither. Despite comparisons I’ve just use I really think there’s no winner here. And yes, I’m generally considered as a Kanban guy but I also strongly believe there’s no silver bullet.

    If you need a kick start Scrum may give you one even though it imposes some constraints on the way you work. On the other hand if you have in your team someone who is experienced with variety of different methods it may be a good idea to start with Kanban and check where it’s going to lead you.

    After all, since I’m not an orthodox, I’ll also tell you should experiment like crazy, no matter which path you choose. Heck, that’s where all those Scrumbans started – people were changing their process, people were breaking The Holy Rules of The Method just to end up with something more optimal for them.

    Final thought

    If I want you to remember one thing from this post it would be: Scrum tells you explicitly how to organize work and improve things, while Kanban tells you nothing about the ideal models and helps you find out the optimal way by yourself.

    After all, this post is big and hairy so I guess I succeeded with the task anyway.

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  • Kanban Basics

    I often say that you can implement Kanban in your team in a single afternoon. That’s how we did that after all. So when Andy Brandt asked me to do Kanban Basics webinar I expected that preparing it would be pretty simple. How long can you talk about few-hour-long task?

    Well, it wasn’t as simple as I expected.

    Kanban itself is very simple. But telling people they should visualize workflow, limit work in progress and measure the flow isn’t really all the basic stuff they need to know. After a while it always ends up with questions how we do this and how we do that.

    What limits should be set on board?
    What happens when a bug is found during testing?
    Should sticky notes be moved back on the board at all?
    How cycle time is measured?
    What happens when the limit is reached?
    What to do when emergency task pops up?
    How to cope with multiple projects?
    Is feature-by-feature deployment mandatory?
    How estimation is done?

    That’s an interesting observation – I often deal with most of these questions at the end of my Kanban presentations, no matter if I cover basic or advanced material. After giving it some thought I decided this would be a good starting point to prepare Kanban Basics presentation.

    What I ended up is presentation below. It covers a bunch of scenarios visualized with (surprise, surprise) Kanban board. Additionally I used Scrum as the reference to make a basic Kanban description easier to understand.

    Kanban Basics

    If you have some basic questions which seem to be omitted in the presentation, please leave a comment. I’d be happy to both answer the questions and update future versions of the presentation.

    If you speak Polish feel free to watch the recording of the webinar.

    Also, check The Kanban Story series as it reveals all the details of Kanban implementation in my current team.

  • Agile Isn’t Immune for People Who Don’t Give a Damn

    I like presenting. I just love the fact that every time I deliver the presentation I find something new in there. It’s like having tiny epiphanies while you’re talking to a crowd. And I’m sure I wouldn’t have them if I didn’t overcome my fears and didn’t start speaking publicly.

    A thing which hit me last time I was delivering my Kanban Story presentation was how fragile agile is in terms of people who don’t give a damn. In the summary of presentation I make a point that Kanban may not be for your team if you work with undisciplined engineers.

    But what I realized while I was talking it is not only about lack of discipline. It’s about care. In Kanban people have to care about Kanban board. They have to move cards as they progress with features. They can’t abuse limits unless it is agreed among the team and team rules allow to. They should think how they could improve the board. They should keep the board up to date.

    Why it is so important? Because the board is single most important information radiator in Kanban teams. If contents of Kanban board are random you spread random information about project among the team and outside the team. You pretty much misinform everyone around. And now the important thing:

    In Kanban teams anyone can easily abuse Kanban board.

    It’s enough someone doesn’t care. He doesn’t care to move cards through the board or put his marker on task he’s working on at the moment or ignore transition criteria or whatever. Suddenly you have random Kanban board and no systemic tools to deal with the issue. People versus Kanban 1:0 at halftime. If you want to know how the match ends, well, you’ll have to read the blog in future since it is a subject for another post.

    It’s already half of A4 page and I haven’t really mentioned agile in general. Only Kanban. Kanban this and Kanban that. Don’t I have something else to say? Well, I do, thanks for bearing with me so far.

    One of reasons why Kanban is so easily abused by people who don’t give a damn is the fact that Kanban prescribes close to nothing. But enough of K-word. Scrum is more formal. Actually Scrum is pretty formal approach if you ask me. How it deals with the problem?

    A bit better. Stand-ups, time-boxing and planning meetings are all practices which help to deal with undisciplined team members. (I wanted to write “engineers” instead of “team members” but I’ve just recalled there are no roles in Scrum besides Scrum Master, Product Owner and Team Member and I prefer not to be killed by some Scrum extremist.) With these practices it is easier to make someone stick to convert folks who don’t care. If you work with Scrum you can’t work without time-boxing while the rest of the team has 2-week long sprints. You are asked the same questions as everyone else during stand-ups. There is more of a stick in Scrum than in Kanban. (Have I just said K-word?)

    XP goes even further. Rules are surrounding you everywhere, my poor engineer. It almost tells you how to pee. Not in pairs. fortunately If you work with XP and you don’t give a damn you’re probably already fired.

    But let’s face it – how many teams out there use eXtreme Programming religiously? Few. More of them follow just a couple of engineering techniques choosing Scrum as their process base. And even then we have whole variety of Scrumbuts, Scrumbans and Scrumwhatevers.

    Average agile approach in real world, if there happen to be something like that, would cover a very limited number of rules. I’d say that there would be less of them than Scrum proposes. And even then rules are often softened or teams choose those which are less painful to adapt.

    So we come back to the first point. The fewer constraints (aka enforced practices) we have in place the more easily our process can be abused by people who don’t give a damn. If your method base on a lot of common understanding instead of tons of process documentations and a number of strict rules buying all people in becomes crucial. Having few rules means that you give people power to create and adjust your software development/project management approach.

    It also means you give them power to destroy and harm it.

    If you like this post you should thank Michal who took the discussion up on Twitter.

  • The Kanban Story: Kanban Alone Is Not Enough

    Recently I had a lot of occasions to discuss Kanban with other people, the coolest one being last meeting of Engineering Academy “Diamond Polishing” (for you who speaks Polish there’s video recording available online). One of things which I stressed during these discussions is that Kanban is not enough to manage a software project.

    I already shared practices we employ and those we don’t. But it is important and worth stressing: you can’t just base on three simple rules of Kanban (limit WIP, visualize workflow, measure lead time) alone. Without best engineering practices your product would suck even though you rigorously followed the rules. That’s not the problem of Kanban only – the same is with Scrum. Kanban is here just to help you to organize work better. If you do crappy job it’s still going to be crappy, just organized a bit better.

    What more, while heavy-weight methods enforce some order because of specifying scope of work up front, using formalized acceptance tests etc, Kanban leaves it all open. In other words doing Kanban wrong way you can do much worse than doing Prince2 wrong way.

    We set up a list of practices to avoid the problem. When I think what results we would achieve if we had no continuous build, no unit tests, no knowledge exchange in terms of learning other developers’ code and no coding standards I’m scared. We’d probably land in never-ending loop of dirty-fixing old dirty-fixes to old bugs just to get anything done.

    All these practices sound very natural now but, to give one example, I confess that’s my first successful approach to unit testing since I manage software development teams.

    So no, don’t treat Kanban as a silver bullet which fixes everything in a second. It’s just the part of the job. The rest isn’t enforced, but you have to figure out right pieces by yourself. Continuous integration and automatic testing are rather mandatory if you care about quality and want to ship often, but there is no universal way which works for everyone.

    Read the whole Kanban Story.

    If you like the story or hate it or just want to win signed copy of Scott Berkun book Confessions of a Public Speaker leave some feedback here.

  • The Kanban Story: The Beginning

    So I found myself in this small team, part of a bigger company but working pretty independent of the rest of people here. Kind of start-upish environment. I knew every single person I worked with. Well, actually I’d chosen most of them and hired them here. The team was great (if you guys are reading this: no, it is not a reason to come for a raise) and personally I didn’t feel an urge to strictly control everything. On the other hand some order is always a nice thing.

    Initially I gave a lot of thought to project management practices and didn’t come with a solution I was happy with.

    I rejected PMP-based heavy-weight process which works for many projects in the organization. We didn’t need all the hassle they bring. At least not at that stage. A natural idea was Scrum which I didn’t like either. Scrum is pretty formalized methodology too and I wanted to avoid formalisms as much as possible. Actually with a lot of R&D work, pretty much prototyping and priorities changing all the time I needed something more flexible.

    I didn’t want to be time-boxed since we were planning to work simultaneously on a few independent small projects which would be hard to synchronize if we wanted to put them all in one team-wide sprint. Creating independent sprints for each of projects was a complete overkill since you don’t really need Scrum sprint for a one-and-a-half-person project.

    Actually I’d say we were at the point where we were too flexible for agile methods. Now, go burn me in flames for being iconoclast.

    After some discussions we collectively agreed we wouldn’t adopt Scrum as a whole but would use some of techniques used there and some other ideas we thought were good. In the next post in the series you’ll find more details how we initially organized our development.

    Keep an eye on the whole story.