Dear Diary,

I completed day 1 of my 2-day Certified ScrumMaster course today and I’m feeling a little bit overwhelmed.  I didn’t have any idea there was a prerequisite of reading a particular book.  Luckily not a lot of other people knew about that either so I didn’t look too stupid.  Nothing we covered today was particularly difficult, it was just new to me.  A whole lot of it seemed like common sense, but as was pointed out, common sense isn’t so common, especially in software development!

I thought it was interesting to cover the history of agile and scrum and then to compare/contrast different methodologies.  I wish we hadn’t spent an hour on it, but it was interesting.  I just don’t know how it will help solve the problem.  Maybe if I was still in the mode of “selling agile” to the company it would have helped.

On the other hand the parts about how the Scrum Master role differs from a traditional project manager role was VERY useful.  Changing from command and control to serving, leading and facilitating will be challenging for some people.  It won’t be hard for me since I never had any control anyway <ha>!

I also liked the estimating part a lot.  Again, it makes sense, but it is so different from what we normally do that I wonder how it will work.  I’m not so sure management will approve of playing poker, even if it is Planning Poker!

The last thing we did was a Scrum simulation.  That was a ton of fun, but I wish it did more to advance my learning.  I guess I got to see Scrum in action, but on such a small scale I’m not sure I learned as much as I would have liked.

Well, on to bed now.  Another full day of CSM training tomorrow!

- Nick

Dear Diary,

I am almost a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) although I’m not sure why.  It seems too easy to sit in a class for 2 days then take a test you can’t fail.  Oh well, 60,000+ CSMs can’t be wrong.  It must be useful.

Today we dug into the Scrum process including the meetings, artifacts and roles a bit more.  We also discussed scaling Scrum and how to start up new Scrum implementations.  I learned quite a bit – I think.  It still seems like too much common sense, but I have to admit I probably wouldn’t have thought of most of it on my own.

I am glad that we covered all of the Scrum process in detail.  I now have a much better idea what each role is supposed to do.  They don’t map so directly to traditional roles.  I’ll need to keep that in mind when I talk to the group as a whole.  It will also be interesting to see how QA reacts when I tell them about estimating as a whole team and things get completed EVERY sprint which means testing more than just at the end of a project!

Tomorrow I meet with the rest of the team to fill them in.  It should be an interesting meeting!

- Nick

Related posts:

1. The ScrumMaster Diaries: #2 – Making the Case to Become a CSM Dear Diary, Tomorrow I am going in to speak to Henry about...
2. The ScrumMaster Diaries: Chapter 1 – We stink Dear Diary,   This is Nick.  I’ve never been much of a writer...
3. The ScrumMaster Diaries: Introduction to the series Back on September 23, 2009, I posted a blog entry titled “New...

Dear Diary,

Tomorrow I am going in to speak to Henry about becoming a Certified Scrum Master.  I’ve done more reading about it and it appears there are more than 60,000 people in the world who have done it before me.  Those kinds of numbers have to help me with my argument.  I also know the popular abbreviation is CSM.  Apparently I just have to attend a specific course for 2 days then pass a test and I get certified.  Who knows, maybe I’ll be certifiable instead!  Ha, ha!  The good news is we can’t get a whole lot worse than we are right now, so I hope Henry is open to the idea.  We’ll see.

-Nick

Dear Diary,

Henry asked me a lot more questions about becoming a CSM than I anticipated.  Luckily I caught him first thing in the morning.  He told me to take a few hours and do some more research.  The whole group is going to meet at 3pm to discuss all of our dev department ideas before another all hands meeting at 4pm.  I decided to take lunch here at home and do the research here.  I doubt anyone will miss me.  I just couldn’t take being at the office any more.  It is a bit of a downer right now.  At least I’m still excited, I just have a lot of questions to get answers to in the next 3 hours!

-Nick

Dear Diary,

Wow!  That was interesting.  To say the least!  We had our department meeting and everyone got to give suggestions about how we could improve.  It seemed like a total blame game.  Someone even used the phrase “blamestorming” which I found hilarious.  Anyway, we went around the room and I ended up being last.  Developers ended up blaming QA and ME!  QA ended up blaming developers and ME!  Managers ended up blaming QA, developers, marketing and ME!  It was totally crazy.  I felt like I had been set up.  Then someone made the suggestion that we wouldn’t be in this mess if I were a better project manager and maybe I should become a PMP so I could do my job better.  Well, that was the last straw!

At that point I totally lost it.  I AM A PMP!!!  Grrr.  Fortunately I was somewhat ready for the abuse and the blame game.  I kept my cool and told everyone I already was a PMP.  I also told them we had done pretty much everything by the PMBOK and still failed.  The person who said I should become a PMP had the nerve to ask what the PMBOK was!  Again, I stayed calm and told him it was the set of practices you had to know in order to become a PMP.

For some reason, remaining calm was working because I had everyone’s attention.  I decided to go for it.  I told them I thought we had to consider completely re-doing the way we created products.  We needed to think about using agile, in particular Scrum.  I then told them of my 3 step plan for implementation:

1. Convince them this could work (at least convince them enough to go to step #2).
2. Have me attend a Certified ScrumMaster course and get certified.
3. Start using Scrum with me acting as “coach” for the team to make sure we did it right.

Lots of questions, but some others, particularly devs were onboard right away.  They had friends using agile and/or Scrum and all were pretty positive about the experience.

Only one problem remained – we had to convince Bob it was the right thing to do since the course would cost $1200.  Fortunately there is a course right here in town starting in 2 days, so we all hoped Bob would get on board quickly.

Well, we didn’t have to wait long.  We had our all hands meeting and spoke about what we did during our week of vacation.  Cindy won the $2500 prize – easily.  She said she decided to relax by seeing a different old friend each day and just catch up on life. She did it by driving 2-4 hours each day since they all lived in different cities, and during those 2-4 hours she listened to books on tape she had been building up for years.  It sounded like she had a lot of fun.

Then it was on to the good stuff.  How were we going to improve.  Marketing started and said their plan was to have development increase resources so software could be released faster in order to keep our customers happy more often.  Bob pointed out the obvious – our problem isn’t the release cycle time, it is in how our releases are perceived.  Marketing then got nasty and said they felt if we did four releases per year at least one of them would be “good enough” for us to keep our customers.  Bob started his career in development, so this argument just didn’t cut it for him.

Then it was our turn to present for a few minutes and the department decided I should be the one to speak since it was basically my plan.  No pressure, right?  Ha!  I decided to be short and brief.  As best I can remember, here is what I said:

In development we’ve decided we aren’t interested any more in playing the blame game.  We want to be able to do something different which will make a big difference.  This is fundamental change which will involve everyone, but which will start in engineering.  If we can’t do our part, the rest of you don’t have to worry because it won’t work anyway.  But if we are able to do something different and better, then we think the company as a whole can dramatically improve.

What I’m talking about is something called agile development.  In particular a product development framework known as Scrum.  I know the name sounds silly, but please get past that.  From what I have read and what people in our department have heard from friends who have made this switch, Scrum can make a company more productive, improve quality and increase stakeholder and customer satisfaction.  In many cases it does all of these things by dramatic amounts.

Bob, we’ve put together a simple plan for adoption.  It is probably way too simple, but it is based on what we know today.  We want the company to spend just $1200 to send me to a 2-day course later this week to learn how to do Scrum.  Next week I would take that knowledge and start leading our group down that path.  We would like 6 weeks to see if it works for us.  We consider this time well spent and we will do everything in our power to make sure after 6 weeks we are in a position to say “this is working, keep going” or “we’re no better, so stop.”  Furthermore, we’d try to ensure the “failure” mode would not only be “we’re no better” but also “we’re no worse.”  This is basically a $1200 investment and trusting us to do our best.

I know trust has been hard to come by in this company lately, but I personally think that may be part of our problem.  Bob, unfortunately in order to make this happen fast enough I need to put you on the spot and have you say “yes” or “no” right now.

Then I stopped and held my breath.  Bob stood up and asked, “Henry, are you on board with this plan?”  Henry said he was.  Bob then asked, “Nick you asked for trust, and I’m going to go out on a limb and give it to you.  I know I’m going to upset a lot of people in this room by saying this, but go do it.  I don’t know enough about Scrum to be able to say no.  This points to a decision I made while we were on break – if I don’t have enough personal experience to say no, I’m going to say yes.  I need to trust all of you to do your jobs well because that is what we hired you to do and I know we only hire the best.”

Phew.  I did it.  Now I have to do it.  What the heck did I just get myself into???

-Nick

Related posts:

1. The ScrumMaster Diaries: #3 – Becoming a CSM Dear Diary, I completed day 1 of my 2-day Certified ScrumMaster course...
2. The ScrumMaster Diaries: Introduction to the series Back on September 23, 2009, I posted a blog entry titled “New...
3. The ScrumMaster Diaries: Chapter 1 – We stink Dear Diary,   This is Nick.  I’ve never been much of a writer...

Dear Diary,  

This is Nick.  I’ve never been much of a writer before, but I made myself a New Year resolution to try to keep an ongoing diary so I could look back in a few years and see how things have gone.  Right now I’m hoping it will be a happy thing to see.  I’m just not so sure it will be.  Today was a pretty rough day at work and it is making me wonder if I made the right choice by going to work for WidCo 6 months ago.  

The good news is we all have a week off and we aren’t even supposed to think about work.  The bad news is thinking about work will be really depressing after today.  Bob (the head honcho of WidCo) picked today to tell us all that the company isn’t doing so well.  Our last two product releases caused us to lose 15% in market share and the slide is continuing.  We really stink was the bottom line of his message.  

Diary, I don’t know what we’re going to do.  I’m really worried.  We’re still in a bit of a recession and finding work now would be nearly impossible.  There has to be a way to make a difference.  I know I’m not supposed to think about work this week, but I don’t think that’s possible.  I’m going to go into the basement office and try to piece together some ideas on how I can help WidCo be successful!  

-Nick  

Dear Diary,  

Is that how I start a second diary entry on the same day?  I have no idea, but I don’t really care right now.  I’m excited and there is no one I can tell about why I’m so excited!!!  I think I figured out a way to help WidCo be successful.  Yes!!!  

I have to write this down so sometime down the road I have an accurate history of how it happened.  It all started by me doing an exercise I learned a long time ago.  I tried to write down WidCo’s problem as accurately as I could and came up with “WidCo has been unsuccessful with software.”  The exercise then says to take that statement, flip it around and search for how to do the opposite.  So, this is the Internet age and I went to Google and typed “succeeding with software” and pressed the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button.  Well, I was VERY lucky!!!  

To say that I was lucky is an incredible understatement.  I ended up at amazon.com with a book called “Succeeding with Agile” by someone named Mike Cohn.  I had no idea what “Agile” was, or who Mike Cohn was or what “Scrum” was or anything, so I was very confused.  I was even more confused when I read the description because it talked about success with agile and scrum and I thought to myself “well that’s great, but what does that have to do with succeeding with software?”  Then it slowly started to sink in – I think.  

Agile seems to be an umbrella for a whole lot of software development processes.  I’m a PMP so I understand there are lots of methodologies out there like RUP for example, but I had never heard of agile.  Then I learned that Scrum is a particular type of agile development which apparently was created in the mid 1990′s.  I did more research and found out Mike Cohn is pretty famous in the agile and scrum world – at least there are some well regarded books written by him and he speaks at lots of conferences.  

Once I got that figured out I decided to dig a bit deeper and see how this agile/scrum thing would help WidCo.  Turns out it may be a silver bullet for us.  

We stink at a lot of things like requirements gathering.  Nothing against Jeff and Laurie, but they don’t really know what the dev teams needs to be successful.  Turns out agile and scrum don’t care so much about requirements!  

We aren’t real good at documenting our work (which is part of why Jean’s job is so hard these days), but agile says write code and don’t worry about documentation.  

The process we use today is pretty bloated with lots of signoffs and paperwork and such, but agile gets rid of all that and says to just get working and refactor if you don’t do it right the first time.  

I am very excited.  I also saw the book was available on Kindle, so I ordered it and it should be downloaded by now.  I’m going to go read for a few hours then come back and write some more.  Can you tell I’m excited!!!!!!!  

-Nick  

Dear Diary,  

Crud, Crud, Crud!!!

This sucks – big time!  I started reading the book and found out it isn’t a basic introductory book.  It really is meant for a person who knows the basics and wants to go beyond them.  Luckily he mentioned something called a Certified Scrum Master class.  Turns out there are quite a few of them around the world.  One is being held locally next week.  I guess I’ll talk to Henry next Monday and see if he thinks it is a good idea.  I’m really not looking forward to having a conversation about attending a class I don’t really know can help us, but it doesn’t look like I have much choice.  The course is $1200 and I’m definitely NOT going to spend my own money on it!

-Nick

Oh, by the way, this is my 100th blog entry!  Raise a can of Diet Coke (or other favorite work appropriate beverage) and join me in a toast – To a lot more blog entries in the future!

Related posts:

1. The ScrumMaster Diaries: #3 – Becoming a CSM Dear Diary, I completed day 1 of my 2-day Certified ScrumMaster course...
2. The ScrumMaster Diaries: Introduction to the series Back on September 23, 2009, I posted a blog entry titled “New...
3. The ScrumMaster Diaries: #2 – Making the Case to Become a CSM Dear Diary, Tomorrow I am going in to speak to Henry about...

Back on September 23, 2009, I posted a blog entry titled “New to agile? What does the ScrumMaster do anyway?” The response was amazing. It was easily the most popular blog posting I’ve ever created. It made me realize people are starving for information about the ScrumMaster role and what it entails.  At the time I didn’t quite know what I could do to give people more on the topic without boring myself writing it and boring YOU with dry content.  Then I thought maybe this could be fun for all of us if I wrote it as a continuing story.  Sound like fun to you?  It certainly sounded like more fun to me to do it that way!  Brilliant (I hope!).

So, based on my brilliant idea, this is the introduction to “The ScrumMaster Diaries.”  It is a fictional account of an organization converting to Scrum.  It is VERY loosely based on some things I have actually witnessed, but all of the names have been changed (to protect the guilty) and even if people see themselves in these blog postings I doubt I was really basing it on them anyway.  Each person in the story is more of a blend of people, not specific individuals.

The organization chart shown below is for WidCo.  They are the company behind Widget – the best selling collaboration software on the market.  They currently hold 45% of the market while 2nd and 3rd in the market hold 27% and 22% respectively.  The rest of the market is comprised of startup companies.  Unfortunately for WidCo, their last two software releases have been disasterous!  Two years ago WidCo had 62% market share and no competitor had more than 20% of the market.  WidCo CEO Bob (you saw that coming, right?) is very concerned with where the company is at and he forsees imminent disaster if something isn’t done quickly.

He recently held an all hands meeting where he explained the true position of the company and made it clear the next product release had to be a winner or the company would face near certain death within 18 months.  He made it clear to everyone in the organization that failure of the next release is not an option and it is up to everyone to help make it be a success.  He also explained that every possible idea should be considered.

He even admitted to being part of the problem so as a New Year’s resolution he told the company he would be much more hands off.  He would only ask for status at the beginning of each month.  He would also be available for anything the company needed him to do to help create a successful release.  The release was coming first over everything else, even if it meant cancelling previously scheduled appointments with clients or industry groups.  He committed to being there to do whatever was necessary and he hoped the rest of the organization would as well.

Bob left the meeting holding his breath.  He knew he laid it on thick, but he felt it was necessary.  Alan and Richard were to the point of arguing about everything in every release.  Jean’s group is completely overwhelmed with support calls after their last two releases and there is no end in sight because there is no money to hire more help.

Henry and Pam also argue all the time.  Sometimes Bob thought that was just because their bosses argued so they felt they had to as well.

Shawn was normally a laid back guy, but he knew how to sell Widget.  Unfortunately he hadn’t hit his sales goals for 2 years and felt it was because the software was simply showing it was old and outdated.  He wasn’t sure Shawn would be staying with the company, but knew he needed him in order to succeed.

Then there was the big problem – Joe and Carol were both control freaks and they both really disliked each other.  It was clearly Dev vs. QA which meant Joe vs. Carol, pretty much all the time.  Poor Jeff, Laurie and Nick were left to fend for themselves.

Bob knew the company was in trouble, but he also knew he had the best people in the world.  He wouldn’t trade a single one for anyone else.  If they couldn’t make this work, then no one could!

After the all hands meeting was over the company was in shock.  As part of the meeting Bob had given everyone a week off to relax so they could come back and make the push necessary for success.  He made it very clear that no one was to work during the week off.  He wanted everyone to remember what having fun felt like.  He even said the person who came back with the best story about having fun would get a $2500 bonus when the company re-opened the next week.

This is where the story will begin with next week’s blog entry.  I’ll be putting these entries into their own category (The ScrumMaster Diaries) so you can always click in the category cloud and get all of the stories in one place.

Until the next chapter comes out, make some guesses in the comments below about how you think the story will play out.  Based on the org chart what do you think Richard and Alan will be doing?  How about the rest of the company?  Hopefully I’ll surprise a few of you along the way, so come back next week and start the journey with WidCo!

Related posts:

1. The ScrumMaster Diaries: #3 – Becoming a CSM Dear Diary, I completed day 1 of my 2-day Certified ScrumMaster course...
2. The ScrumMaster Diaries: #2 – Making the Case to Become a CSM Dear Diary, Tomorrow I am going in to speak to Henry about...
3. The ScrumMaster Diaries: Chapter 1 – We stink Dear Diary,   This is Nick.  I’ve never been much of a writer...