Posts Tagged scrummaster

A Mirror for the Team

Posted by David Bland in agile, facilitation, retrospectives, scrum on July 20, 2010

ScrumMaster Lego MirrorAlistair Cockburn once stated that Scrum is a mirror, and that organizations need to look into the Scrum mirror no matter how difficult it may be.

I would take that a step further and say that the ScrumMaster is the mirror for the team.

A team often unintentionally falls back into situations in which they’ve previously committed to improving.

For example, let’s say that in the last iteration retrospective the team decided that they need to expand the ownership of each story. The last iteration was a success, yet it seemed as though they were not collaborating effectively. Each user story had one developer doing most, if not all of the assigned tasks… [Read More]

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ScrumMasters Now Earn More Money Than Project Managers

Posted by David Bland in jobs, scrum, trends on June 11, 2010

According to the latest data from Indeed.com, the annual salary of a ScrumMaster now surpasses that of a Project Manager.

Even more surprising, is just how quickly the ScrumMaster salaries have increased in such a short amount of time. As you may remember, I performed similar job research in Oct 2009 when the ScrumMaster role pulled in around $88,000 a year.

ScrumMasters now make on average $95,000 a year, which is a $7,000 increase.

ScrumMasters Earn More Than Project Managers

On the other hand, Project Manager salaries seem to have become stagnant… [Read More]

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Passive Aggressive Facilitation

Posted by David Bland in facilitation, scrum on June 8, 2010

Passive Aggressive FacilitationPracticing servant leadership as a ScrumMaster requires a great deal of empathy and patience. This includes suppressing actions that would otherwise cause harm to team morale and self organization if unchecked.

One trait in particular that is extremely counterproductive to the role is passive aggressiveness.

As someone who has been known to be snarky on occasion, I’ve had to practice my facilitation skills over time in a real team setting… [Read More]

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SaMoLo in Retrospectives

Posted by David Bland in agile, extreme programming, retrospectives, scrum on May 11, 2010

SaMoLo, or the Same as, More of, Less of technique, is a fine tuning facilitation exercise with roots in early XP.

‘Same As’ are those traits that you value and don’t want to lose. Many traditional feedback methods end up glossing over these items and as a result the behaviors that should be reinforced, aren’t.

‘More Of’ are those traits that you want to encourage. It may be a newly acquired skill or the beginning of a behavior. Or it may be an area where something is lacking and you want to help ther person find a way of bridging the gap.

‘Less Of’ are those traits that have simply gone too far. They may be great traits, but eventually someone will ‘out Herods, Herod’ and things need to return to normal. – fairlygoodpractices.com

Thanks in part to Jeff Nielsen, I’ve discovered that SaMoLo can also be the sweet spot for easing new teams into iteration retrospectives.

  1. It is easy to remember
  2. More engaging than What worked? What didn’t?
  3. Takes 30 to 40 minutes
  4. Pairs well with other exercises

In a recent iteration retrospective I paired the SaMoLo technique with… [Read More]

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The Daily Standup Trap

Posted by David Bland in agile, scrum on April 21, 2010

The 15 minute daily standup, or daily scrum, is one of the more widely adopted artifacts of the iterative software movement. Even companies who only dip their toe into Agile practices typically adopt this since it seems so easy to do.
scrumology.net trap

  1. What did you do yesterday?
  2. What will you do today?
  3. What is blocking progress?

While you can certainly take these questions and use them as the basis for your daily standup, you may be surprised at how your team actually responds to them. Some may find these questions laughable and not take them seriously. Some may become defensive, even if they have no reason to be. Some may clam up and provide almost no detail at all, while others ramble on about every minute of their day… [Read More]

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