I am writing here to process an interaction which I found unsettling.  There are a few guest speakers here from the USA including Mary Poppendieck and Micah Martin.  It surprised and disappointed me that both Mary and Micah used the final panel discussion of the conference to publicly denounce Scrum as “insufficient for building software”, and deride the CSM certificate as being useless.

Micah bemoaned the fact that the last Agile conference (in Toronto) had been “taken over” by Scrum Masters, and made the comment that teams “did not need a Scrum Master to tell them what to do”.  Luckily many attendees at this event were differently informed than Micah in their understanding of the role.  I talked quietly off-panel with him afterwards to explain that 1) I agreed with him: teams do not need Scrum Masters to tell them what to do, and 2) that he had completely misrepresented the role.  Micah was willing to listen and hear.  In his other panel comments Micah said many memorable and insightful things about software craftsmanship that I happily agree with.  In fact, I think that he and I are 90% aligned in our thinking.

More disturbing was Mary Poppendieck’s attitude towards Scrum.  I would actually describe it as hostile, and when I tried to engage her in dialog about it later at the reception she (unlike Micah) seemed unwilling to listen but chose instead to talk at me.  She claimed again that Scrum was insufficient, that it had the wrong roles, that it targeted dysfunctional companies (well, yes!), and that she disliked it because she spent 90% of her time cleaning up after bad Scrum implementations (she then went on to say she never worked in dysfunctional companies, which seems somewhat inconsistent with the earlier clean-up statement).

Then Mary singled out Jeff Sutherland as an exception, claiming he doesn’t do Scrum the way everyone else does, as he enforces all necessary software development practices, has a lead engineer in the team, does architecture up front, and has a Scrum Master who codes 90% of the time. In essence he runs “the Toyota process”.  I am not stating facts here, just repeating the gist of the conversation.  I concluded that in Mary’s opinion only Jeff Sutherland (and those trainers who work directly “for” him) understand what Scrum is, or ought to be: i.e. Sutherland-Scrum rather than Schwaber-Scrum.  The rest of us are charlatans.

It was a very uncomfortable, and one-sided conversation, and a little surreal given the joy and openness of the conference up to that moment; it seemed that every question or comment I offered was taken as an attack.  I was seeking a crack in the wall of resistance to initiate a dialog with Mary, but I did not find one.  Dave Nicolette, also present at the table had more luck, perhaps because he is not a Scrum Trainer.  Dave actually did a skillful and patient job of attempting to offer some balance to the conversation.

Disparaging and mocking comments about Scrum and CSM certification were also made during and following the Agile2008 conference in Toronto by some of the key speakers.  There appears to be a trend here, one which I find ugly and sad.  It is no surprise when people new to Scrum misunderstand it — it is difficult to fully grasp its full implication, but it is very surprising and disturbing that people deeply involved in the Agile movement show such a lack of understanding of the true nature of Scrum, to the point where they feel the need to publicly denounce it.

As I thought about all of this later in the evening, I recalled a comment Mary made during the panel today, immediately following my suggestion that reflection was essential and teams need to run regular retrospectives if they are to improve.  Mary enthusiastically retreived the microphone from me and said something like “as the voice of opposition here I have to say that I don’t agree with Scrum retrospectives.  I have my teams meet for a couple of hours every week to focus on process improvement, using ‘plan-do-check-act’ and other scientifically proven process improvement formulas” (I am paraphrasing).

It occurred to me that maybe Mary was a process-focused person, and was not considering, or particularly interested in human factors.  Retrospectives in Scrum (for me, and many I know) begin with individual improvement, personal development if you like.  Good process follows.  Perhaps this is a key difference between Lean and Scrum: Lean is about efficient process; Scrum is about effective people.

I am sure the preceding statement will call forth loud objections, but I am grasping at straws here, trying to make sense of why someone as intelligent, experienced and well-respected as Mary Poppendeick would need to publicly disparage a beautifully elegant Agile framework proven to be so successful for so many organizations.  It doesn’t make sense to me.

Why is Agile Software Development becoming a competition for some?  Why must Scrum lose for Lean to win?  This is not the presidential election.  We are all seeking the same goals, and it is the diversity of thought, the rich, chaotic mix of ideas that will help us achieve those goals.  There is no “one truth”.

I’d love to help get the focus away from competition and back onto collaboration.  If you have any suggestions toward this end, please add your thoughts here.

N.B. this blog post naturally represents only my perspective.  It is a gut response, wholly subjective, and therefore not “truth”.  I’d be happy for anyone else present during the panel discussion or the following reception, especially those mentioned by name, to add their own perspective.

Spent most of Friday in my private Jacuzzi, unwinding and reading the Rough Guide, and on Friday night I went out with a bunch of the guys from the course (around 12 of us) for Asado – barbequed beef and other assorted cow parts.  I was persuaded to eat something unidentifiable – “don’t ask what it is, ask if it is good!”  It wasn’t, and I did ask.  Glands.  I regretted asking.  The whole Argentina beef experience was a bit of a let down, really.  The dessert however was a perfect example of Argentinean flan, topped with cream and dulce de leche, the sweetest thing in the world.  That alone is worth returning for – and the pasta, of course.

Spent Saturday strolling through La Boca, absorbing football, painted buildings, local artists, tourist trash and tango, and later through my local area, Palermo, full of charm and style and a great market place.  Really, a lazy wrap-down to the week.  Next time I’ll be more of a tourist.  This time it was work and people focused.  The best part of this whole trip was the people I met: the welcome, the friendliness, the course itself, it all exceeded expectations.  I’m home now, 18 grueling hours of flying.  Tired, but happy.  The desire to return soon for more of the city and the people is strong today.  Thanks everyone for the great feedback, and the kind words.  Alan and I are already planning the next visit.  Details will be available here as they become known.  Stay tuned.

Some related blog entries and photographs…

Mariano’s Blog 1
Johnny’s Blog
Shaggy’s Blog
Mariano’s Blog 2
Comments here
Angel’s Blog
Ariel’s Photographs: Day 1 *
Ariel’s Photographs Day 2 *
* Yahoo login needed to view the laasd photos

• So… they say that Scrum is not an “off the shelf” methodology.
• Well, wouldn’t it be nice if it was?
• Time to create Scrum In A Box – the ultimate off-the-shelf methodology for the smart, bargain-hunting Software Process Shopper.
• With this amazing new product all need for CSM training will be eliminated. 
• Get the Box, and DO SCRUM!

This was the vision given to the four development teams on the Buenos Aires CSM course.  Their task was to build this product in two days, over four 30-minute sprints.  A Product Owner was chosen for each team.  The teams decided for themselves who this would be, and eventually all the teams rotated this role.  The rest of the team were developers.  There was no assigned ScrumMaster role, but everything that would be learned through this simulation would educate the participants on the knowledge and qualities needed to take on that role.  Task boards had been created on the walls of the room and the teams were introduced to this essential Scrum tool prior to starting. 

We began the simulation by considering the requirements.  The teams had a badly written, and very vague product backlog to help them kick off.  The first part of the simulation involved a discussion on usability.  Who was this product for?  Who would use it?  Why?  Through this conversation the teams began to understand that perhaps there was a serious use for such a product.  It could be a Scrum education tool.  Working with their product owner the teams began writing user stories.  This proved to be very difficult.  The vision was now unclear, the technology (modeling clay, cardboard, craft knives, marker pens, collage…) was unfamiliar to most – and it was day one of the CSM course, for heaven’s sake!  These people had yet to learn about Scrum.  All in all it felt very scary and chaotic. 

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, discussion and analysis began paralyzing the teams.  The fog was thick and everyone was trying to talk their way out of it.  Not very efficient.  It was time for action.  Near the end of the first day the teams executed Sprint One.  Planning was tough; no clear requirements had been written, the teams had found estimation close to impossible and no one had any sense of business value.  I encouraged the product owners to simply pick two things that they thought the teams could start on, have the teams figure out some tasks and just get going.  Each team had a task board to work from; the planning sessions and the daily meeting would be centered on this board.

The teams all felt a sense of failure after Sprint One.  The product owners essentially rejected everything they saw.  But this is when the learning began.  Through seeing what he didn’t want, each product owner began to get a better idea of what he did want.  Working closely with the developers a vision emerged through the review, and was more finely tuned through the retrospective and the following planning meeting.

The second sprint slowed down a little, as more focus was put on the bigger picture, on the design/architecture of the product.  Less was delivered, but there was a sense that the teams were on the right pathway.  In the third sprint some very high quality work was beginning to happen and by the end of the forth sprint some amazing products were fully completed.  It was astounding.

This was the first time I had run a CSM class in this way, and the quality of the work far exceeded my expectations.  But it was not only quality in terms of the product itself; the participants really began to embody the sprit of Scrum in their work.  Teams became cohesive wholes, “pair-programming” practices were adopted, acceptance criteria was defined before development started, a common understanding of “done” emerged.  All the good Agile development practices (some of which I had not even introduced) began happening.  The room was buzzing.

In one excellent moment at the end of sprint three, a team who had designed their product as a board game spent the entire 15 minute review meeting playing the game with their product owner.  They described it as their “acceptance test”.  Beautiful!

As each sprint went by, I took less and less of a process-driving role.  (basically, I got tired of clock-watching and shouting).  The fourth sprint was total self-management and was the most effective of all, with everyone keeping to the time boxes and completing all their work on schedule – in fact some groups completed a few minutes ahead of schedule and were able to simply relax.  I spent most of the fourth sprint walking around the room, absorbing the energy and passion, with a big grin on my face.

Scrum In A Box gave the participants of this course the opportunity to learn Scrum at many levels.  They were in a class on Scrum, they were actually doing Scrum, and they were building a representation of Scrum which forced them to continually assess Scrum.  There was a sense of introspection and infinite recursion here.  A life-force beyond anything that was planned.  One team even built this idea into their product: the final element of their “Scrum tour” was a set of instructions of how to build “Scrum In  A Box” to educate others.

I was honored to be able to facilitate this CSM class.  I learned so much myself from the experience, and was fueled by the passion and engagement.  I’d like to thank all the participants for making this such a great experience, and for embracing Scrum so openly and joyfully.  I consider this a true shared learning experience.

     Click to view

Later that evening I gave a two hour talk on Scrum at the public university.   I had imagined this as more of a lecture-style talk, but my co-organizer Alan Cyment had other ideas.  He encouraged me – and the audience – to get more interactive and we had a bunch of them up on the podium, holding hands in a twisted spaghetti-like formation, performing an exercise that in five minutes illustrates self-organization in a way that a million words could not begin to explain.  Following that interlude the energy of the room changed from quiet suspicion to interested engagement.  Thanks, Alan.  At the end of the talk we had a number of requests for further CSM training in Argentina. El virus está aquí!  Or, in Babelfish-speak: the agile insect has landed!

I now have a couple of days to relax in Buenos Aires, before returning on Saturday.

Language has not been too much of an issue.  Enough participants speak good English to assist in translating for those that don’t.  Once we got past the first couple of hours of lecture (to cover the basic introductory stuff) the course became nicely interactive, and the language thing became even less of a barrier, as I had anticipated it would.  There is movement, there is passion, there is energy.

The overriding image I have of yesterday is best summed up by the phrase “Bounded Chaos”.  That’s Scrum.  The teams are being asked to build a product where the requirements are vague and the technology unfamiliar to most.  I’ll write more at the end of the course about the product the teams are building, preferring to keep that under wraps for now.  Mapping to the Stacey Matrix¹, we were on the edge of anarchy.  The more the teams tried to talk themselves out of that space the worse it got, and the deeper they entrenched themselves.  Predictably, talking just put us in the Analysis-Paralysis space.  The only way out was through action.  The teams were encouraged to start sprinting, to stop talking and take action.  It was chaos, but it was chaos with some boundaries around it: time-boxed, collaborative environment, regular feedback loop.  From the chaos, order emerged in the form of working agreements and innovative product.  It took just thirty minutes (the first sprint) to go from despair to knowledge, to go from fear to excited anticipation, to go from nothing to something.  Emergence.  That’s Scrum.

More tomorrow.

1. Read about Complex Adaptive Systems and the Stacey Matrix here.

The translation effort was probably in vain anyway, as today I discovered that it is not the written word the Argentinean software people have difficulty with, but the spoken.  This has caused me to inspect my Powerpoint deck, kept deliberately minimal to avoid confusion, and add a number of new slides which can support my (now to be expected) unclear verbal expression.  So here I am at midnight, drinking coffee and inspecting and adapting like crazy.  Not really sustainable pace… nervousness and coffee: a lethal combination.

I have designed this course to be mostly interactive, so the participants can talk to each other in any language they choose, and I don’t need to understand a word of their discussions.  This course will be learning-by-doing:  Scrum simulation from start to finish.  The concept is something I have been experimenting with over the past few weeks, along with a couple of CSM/Trainer colleagues.  Results so far have been very positive, but it has not yet been tried in a different language… More tomorrow.

A few general interest notes… I am staying in an apartment belonging to a friend of my co-organizer, Alan Cyment.  Alan has essentially put this course together, finding the space, gathering the people, and organizing my accommodation and various entertainments.  The apartment belongs to an ex-professor of his, so full of books, all in Spanish except for “Eats Shoots and Leaves” (is that even translatable?) and the occasional Douglas Adams novel. 

The apartment is on the eighth (top) floor of a city apartment block.  There is a Jacuzzi in the living room; no kidding.  On a deck, and everything.  In  fact, the office desk is also on the deck, and the only available chairs have the spindliest legs imaginable.  Trying to place one of these chairs on the deck and have it not slip through the cracks… well, you can imagine.  It’s like a challenge from one of those dumb TV shows (hidden cameras in the walls,  maybe?).  After making the same mistake and expecting a different result enough times, I resorted to sitting on a bean bag, stacked up with two sofa cushions.  It started well, but when I found the keyboard was at the level of my chin and I felt like a hunch-backed midget I eventually gave up and relocated to the dining room.  The internet access is now spotty, at best.  Compromise – hate it.

Alan and I did some last minute running around this evening, trying to buy a flip chart.  Not something that is easily found in this city, apparently.  There is not even a common translation for the item.  We settled on a big role of brown paper instead, which we shall line the walls of the training room with before we begin.  Reconceiving – love it!

Twenty-four people have enrolled for this course.  Eleven more were turned away.  That is quite remarkable.  When Alan and I first discussed this, we optimistically hoped for around fifteen, which would have just covered expenses.  It is still largely a labor of love – and a challenge.  The economy in Argentina is such that the cost of this course seems extremely expensive to locals, yet is barely viable for a trainer to come here.  Not something that bodes well for future training.  Love of Scrum and a desire to spread the word will need to be the inspiring force for future trainers to head out this way.

I hope I am able to offer something worthwhile over the next two days.  Training anyone, anywhere, is a noble and scary endeavor, and one I shall never take for granted.  Time to get some rest.