Pythagoras moment

Monday evening was spent discussing retrospectives with fellow members of the Swedish Scrum User Group. I came away from the evening with a few new ideas but it wasn't until a couple of days later that I had a pythagoras-in-the-bath moment.

But first more about Monday. Once again we used the Open Space format for this get together. As Harrison Owen puts it:

Open Space Technology is effective when real learning, innovation, and departure from the norm are required. When you aren't quite sure where you are, and less than clear about where you are headed, and require the best thinking and support from all those who wish to be involved, Open Space Technology will provide the means.

Hold your horses! Isn't that also a perfect description of a retro. A bunch of enthusiasts getting together to come up with imaginative solutions to tricky problems. Why use open space just to discuss retros when open space can be used to do a retro? Eureka! Now I know how I'm going to do our next retro.

Retrospective serendipity

If we hadn’t run out of time at our latest retrospective then I wouldn’t have discovered SurveyMonkey.com.

We usually end our retros by dot voting on a list of suggested improvements. This time the retro had been particularly fruitful – lots of interesting discussions and a dozen improvement suggestions. And then our time ran out.

With various team members already heading off to their next meetings I rashly promised to send out an internet based survey so that we could at least prioritize our improvements list before the afternoon’s planning session.

And then I started to wonder if I’d promised too much. With no time to do an in depth market analysis and after a quick google I selected SurveyMonkey. A choice I wasn't going to regret. 15 minutes later the survey was sent out and in the following planning meeting we had a nicely prioritized list of suggested improvements.

It worked so well that I think we’ll do it this way again – even if we don’t run out of time in our retrospective.

Scrumming for Britain

As a scrum master I sometimes find it useful to compare what I do with coaching a sports team. Recently I was given the opportunity to put this theory into practice when I was invited to coach a national team at the World Orienteering Championships.

One of the most important jobs of a scrum master is to ensure that the day to day work of the team runs smoothly. Above all a happy team is a productive team. Likewise a happy team of athletes will get better results. So this was one of my main targets when going into the World Championships – shield the runner’s from any external problems and create a positive atmosphere.

You might think that a coach would spend most of his time telling the athletes what to do. But for a team of experienced international athletes there’s not an awful lot new to tell them. In fact I found myself working more like a facilitator – stimulating discussions, and encouraging the athletes to come up with their own solutions for handling the race situations. Very scrum masterish!

Of course there are differences too. Running a major championship is more comparable to releasing a system rather than working in scrum sprints. Though this is just what the athletes do in the run up to a major race. Using short, medium and long term goals they work incrementally towards the big release date.

So how did it go? No medals this time but some successes as well as a few disappointments. Now I hope there will be a chance to do a retrospective with the team – I’m sure that would help them get better results next time. And help me to do a better job, if I’m asked to help again.