Certified Scrum Master Course Day 1

Well, here I am in Norway and back in my hotel after spending the first day at the Felix Centre on a course with 60 other people interested n SCRUM, Yes I did say 60 other people. I was expecting a small class and my jaw probably dropped as I entered the room 5 minutes late - the Norwegians seem to be good on time-keeping - but my excuse is my taxi driver who could not understand my map after I got ‘lost’. Maybe. Yes I did pay the equivalent of £10 to go what could have been 100 yards - he did drive around for a bit…hmmmm - and it was only on walking back to my hotel I thought - hang on a minute! Anyway - I’m walking all the way tomorrow. And the cheapest fair from the Airport - 600 krona - which is over £65…crikey - the train would have been cheaper but I arrived late at nght. Anyway…the course…

The course

The course started with the warm up act - “what do you expect to get answered from this course” - and the questions got posted on the walls around the large room in the basement - with the intention of answering them over two days. My particular question was ‘where are the hard numbers and evidence on productivity gains to prove that SCRUM is worth doing’ - that could be fed into a business case to satisfy a demanding CEO - a fair enough question - and one I would be asking if I was the CEO if presented with a fuzzy - “this scrum stuff seems to work lets give it a shot” kind of argument!

The course is well structured and the hand out materials are fine. You can get most of the materials from within the two books written by Ken Schweiber - who was giving the course - dressed in a New Zealand All Blacks Shirt with Scrumalliance on the back! Being of Welsh Origin I thought - do not remind me! Ken is a very personable chap and very experienced in the industry - and this came through in his responses to the questions. I got the feeling that some of the participants thought SCRUM = Agile. Period. Whch it isn’t. The teams were arranged into groups of 6 - therefore 10 teams - I was number 61 - and was not even on the list - although I had received confirmation. Organisational hiccup.

The exercises were always time constrained - time-boxed I guess and were there to prove a point. There is never a right answer - and covered the usual suspects - keeping customers happy, prioriritised product backlogs, sprints, when does ‘done’ = done and so on and the importance of quality.  It was the questions from the participants that brought SCRUM to life. There were sometimes contradictions - for example - the Product Owner prioritises - optimally according to ROI - contrasted with - its up to the Product Owner what he wants even if it is not opimal - verses the need to be transparent to the business. Now if I had a Product Owner who kept picking non-optimal stuff with the Lowest ROI I would not be happy - and  would need to be pretty transparent with the business on what was happening…but that’s me - I like the numbers to make sense.  Could this happen - err…I think you will find that it can - its called pet projects.

The participants covered developers, testers, managing directors - you name it - they seemed to be there. When it comes to who owns the business case the answer was that the Product Owner prioritised against the business case and can cause the Project to Stop if necessary - because it costs more than originally planned, or because you are going to miss the date etc - i.e the ‘control/reporting’ job usually taken by the Project Manager. The Self-organising team concept ws stressed over and over again - so Project Managers might need to re-assess their roles in the future. This then leads to who leads the team  - the answer is the team is self-organising and the SCRUM Master is the facilitator. Well - yes I know that - but you could see the looks on some of the faces - contorted with a strange - hmmm - does that mean my job is ..er….hmm.. and so on. Its a paradigm shift.

The other burning question was one of emergent architectures. The need for up-front architecture verses one that unwinds as the project progresses. Ken gave an example that made sense for emerging architecture - but having been an architect in a former life I did not buy it - at least not fully - so this is something I will certainly write in the next few weeks. Interestingly he said that Motorola practised emerging architecture - but Motorola ia a big company - and I would be surprised if..and..if..and…get it!!

Day 1 over - I am off for a curry - yes I did see an Indian Restaurant in Oslo - good british food