Scrum Guide 2020: Scrum Masters are the True Leaders

Scrum Masters Are The True Leaders

Just take a second to imagine a professional environment where every individual connects and donates their intellectual capacity to the fullest. It’s a place where each person experiences contentment. It’s a workplace that bestows fulfilment too. Then again, the description here seems somewhat booking and way too ideal. Is it possible to create such a working environment? Indeed, it is! If so, then how? With all my experience, I can say that the present leadership archetype can’t do it, even if everything else falls into place. Proper certified scrum master training at tryScrum is an incredibly popular framework, and it tried to fix the problem by returning it unsolved. Sounds confusing, right? The creators tried to fight fire with fire by giving Scrum Master the role of a leader. Now, for ages, many leaders forced their employees through commands, obligation, and conformity. Such leadership strategies won’t work in today’s complex world. So, what is it that requires changing?

Scrum found the perfect answer to this question by not solving the problem. It lets people solve their own issues. Jeff and Ken redefined and polished the idea of the role of Scrum Master from a “Servant Leader” to a “True Leader” in the 2020 Scrum Guide.

Understanding the concept of a True Leader

What’s the deal with this term, anyway? After all, too many individuals raise their hands whenever someone asks them whether they wish to assume the role of a boss. Who’s the True Leader among them? The only way to answer it is to take a step back and find out: What do True Leaders try to gain? These people only want to help others find a leg to stand on instead of begging others for support. A True Leader won’t try to make others go blind by showcasing his/her brilliance. This person will act as a reflector of light so that we can see ourselves from an entirely new angle.

Everyone must be a leader – The Rebbe

The distinctiveness of True Leaders

Thinking out loud

Discussing what you think is essential in creating all the difference. It’s the only way to become a servant-leader from an information dispenser. We educate people to give voice to their thoughts so that their subordinates at the workplace can’t resort to assumptions. It also brings transparency and makes the leader trustworthy.

Expanding the space of solutions

Among all the intentions of a True Leader, one, in my view, is to let loose collective intelligence. In order to do it, it’s crucial to allow the team to disclose their views, thoughts, beliefs, as well as the things that don’t sit right with them. It’s about creating a safe zone and promoting a continuous buzz of conversation among the members.

Informative authority

Everyone will follow a True Leader without questioning him/her as long as the person manages to present himself/herself as a bona fide executor. By giving people more authority, we create better leaders. These people come up with durable mechanisms to create a paradigm shift.

Undoubtedly, donning the skin of a True Leader is extremely challenging, but achievable nonetheless. As soon as we make our minds to follow the path before us to become a Scrum Master, I think we can make significant contributions to the world by improving our capabilities. In doing so, we yield results that matter and even become whole by discovering and recreating our belief structure.

Resource: https://tryscrum.com/2020/12/30/scrum-guide-2020-scrum-masters-are-the-true-leaders/

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Scrum Certification Online: Contract Your Team!

In this blog series I would like to address topics that relate to professional team coaching as well as Professional Scrum. In the course of becoming a Professional Team Coach, I noticed a lot of interesting topics for Scrum Masters who want to improve their coaching stance. I'd like to note that models and terms I am using and discuss are not mine. They come from training and coaching sessions belonging to Vroemen from Teamchange. The connection I make to Scrum is my interpretation.

Contracting and containment

The word contract often triggers some raised eyebrows in the Scrum community. It may feel like something strict that prevents people from collaborating, referencing back to the agile manifesto for software development. The fact that this manifesto motivated us to collaborate with our customers instead of negotiating contracts, was a sign that collaboration and contracting were out of balance. However, there is a new need for a contract: a (psychological) contract between the Scrum Master and the Scrum Team (including the Development Team).

By this I don't mean a big contract upfront with the signature of the whole Scrum Team. There are more ways to contract a team.

A couple of examples:

- You have a certain objective in mind for this Retrospective. At the beginning of the session you're transparant about this and check if the Scrum Team is ready and willing to achieve this objective together;

- You're an hour into a refinement session and you read the room. There is tension in the room, discussions are hardened. You suggest a short break and you do a check-in before continuing;

- You start with a new assignment as a Scrum Master. You're assigned to the marketing team. The marketing team never asked for Scrum, let alone a Scrum Master. So this is the first thing you bring up when you meet the team. Together you set up some rules of engagement during professional agile leadership certification, so you can be a servant leader to the team. Or maybe you don't take on the assignment at all?

- You meet with a new team and you create a set of team rules that everybody can agree on.

I'm sure now that I've given some examples, you can think of a couple examples of you're own?

So this contracting doesn't happen just once. It happens over-and-over-again.

Creating a contract like this will create containment and safety for the team to freely express themselves because of the containment of this contract.

Contract the team, not (just) the manager

You will often encounter managers or customers you work with to take on some improvements regarding a specific Scrum Team. Things have not been going that smooth and you're the perfect match to solve this teams' problems. Before you agree to take on the assignment, take a moment to talk to the team first to assess their view on the situation. If this team does not want to be coached, chances are you will be having a very hard time doing so. Find out what the needs of this team are. What do they think/feel? What's the relationship between them and management? All of these things affect the ability of you being able to help this team grow or not. 

I was once the Scrum Master of two teams that started out with Scrum. I was hired by the CEO to help these teams become better Scrum Teams. Or actually, the CEO thought I would help the team perform better on their targets. Management started putting more and more pressure on the teams and they wanted me to do the same. This led to the situation that I had to end my contract with this company. The CEO did not want Scrum, he wanted to get results as fast as possible by pressuring the teams. No sustainable pace what so ever. My contract with the CEO was in conflict with the contract I had (not) made with the Scrum Teams.

Contact and contract

Contact and contract are not that different. Making contact with the people in your team is like making a psychological contract. Sometimes this is done by a subtle check-in, sometimes more clearly by asking for permission to proceed with the agenda for a session. Or having a conversion on the expectations of your role as a Scrum Master in a team. If you treat a contract in this way, you and your Scrum Team will most definitely benefit.

Resource: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/scrum-master-contract-your-team 

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How Tools Condition Our Way Of Working In Certified Scrum Master Training?

This week twitter was full of comments about the latest update from JIRA, the dictator of the way we work, the world's most famous Ticket Management tool. I put Ticket Management because it is what it is. JIRA is super vitamin with plugins but what it does really well is ticket management.

Returning to the topic, I put here the update, sorry because I only found it in English and I prefer to show the speech from the original source.

This is the most impressive thing I have seen in time. We put decimals in the story points. We have gone crazy! Various things here. The first is that in good professional scrum master training the story points are a complementary practice.

From what you see and what I have seen in many organizations that I have helped, JIRA makes you a slave to the way you work. Epics, Story Points, Versions, JIRA is assuming that all teams in the world use story points. Big mistake! I'd like to ask the audience a question. How many people who are going to read this newsletter are comfortable with the story points?

It's more. How many people have had to explain to their hierarchical superior who is in the orbit of the development team that a Story Point is? And finally, how many people in the audience are slaves to these JIRA setups? Unfortunately, JIRA imposes our way of working.

I have been endless times trying to answer these questions. And I have always had to make a break, like the day from Messi to Boateng, to have a kind of board for converting hours to story points…. until I discovered Kanban with Scrum.

Kanban with Scrum gave me what I needed. Go back to talking about days instead of story points. In Kanban, we planted 4 metrics; we planted Work in Progress, Throughput, Work Item Age and Cycle Time.

With these 4 metrics you will not need anything else. The most important thing is that you are going to think again in days and not in points.

I made a video explaining how to ditch the story points and move on to more realistic metrics for team day. I am attaching the video below in case you want to see it. I recommend it to end your "nightmare" of story points. Flow control is basic and strategic for any team. There, conversations change and better decisions are made.

Bottlenecks are better observed from the flow analysis and also with the 4 previous metrics we can better manage future predictability. You do not believe me? I recommend you watch the video that I am attaching to you in this newsletter. Make a game of Twig and you will see how these metrics help you.

As professional advice, I also tell you that your life will be better with JIRA faraway since it is to capture the dictatorship imposed for our way of working in the 21st century.

Resource: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/como-las-herramientas-nos-condicionan-nuestra-manera-de-trabajar 

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