Just listened to Tony Richards "The Capital Role of Scrum" in Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast (yes I know, this is Vasco's podcast and it does have value when he sticks to Scrum topics). Vasco describes the scrum Master as the Scrum Mom.
This brings to mind a concept we (wife and me) came to a bit late in our child raising experience. We encountered Parenting with Love and Logic a bit late - middle school. In this paradigm, there are 3 types of parents.
- The drill sergeant parent
- The helicopter parent
- The consultant parent
In the Scrum paradigm
- Drill Sergent - enforces compliance with rules using the policies and procedures of the firm's software development lifecycle (SDLC). Remember Jack Welsch's quote bureaucracy protects the organization from the incompetent. When everyone is competent less bureaucracy is needed.
- Helicopter - rescue the team when they get in trouble. This transfers the accountability for getting things done to the Scrum Master, rather than the Scrum Team.
It's the Consultant that serves as the best parenting style. For an Agile (Scrum) Team, the parenting actions in Love and Logic have direct applicability. I'm not suggesting the Scrum master or Scrum Coach is the parent of the team. Rather the paradigm of parenting is applicable. Vasco may not have realized that, but parenting is very close to managing the action of others for a beneficial outcome of both those performing the work and those paying for the work.
- Provide messages of personal worth and strength - a team is defined as a small group of qualified individuals who hold each other accountable for a shared outcome. The SM needs to message that idea at all times. Determine if the team is behaving as a team, and when they are not consulting with them to determine why not, what can be changed to get back to the team processes. Here's one of the best talks about what a Team does when it is working properly.
- Very seldom mention responsibilities - if the team is acting like a team, then they have a shared accountability for the outcomes. This is self-defining the responsibilities. The have agreement on this accountability for a shared outcome means having a process to reveal the outcome. Product Roadmap, Release Plan, backlogs, Big Visible Charts again, are ways to broadcast the results of the shared outcome Alistair Cockburn calls these Information Radiators.
- Demonstrates how to take care of self and be responsible - the SM behaves as a consultant advisor.
- Shares personal feelings about own performance and responsibilities - communication is all ways (meaning not top down, not bottom up, not dominated by the vocal few).
- Provides and helps team explore alternatives and then allows the team to make their own decision - making those decisions is the basis of Scrum. Along with the accountability of the team for those decisions.
- Provides “time frames” in which the team may complete responsibilities - all software development is time-based. Those paying for the work hopefully understand the time value of money. Time is the only thing a team can't get more of. Self-managing in the presence of uncertainty means the team must manage the time aspects of their work.
- Models doing a good job, finishing, cleaning up, feeling good about it - the SM walks the walk of being a consultative guide.
- Often asks, “Who owns the problem?” helps the team explore solutions to the problem - guides the team to the solution through Socratic interaction. This means the SM needs to have some sense of what the solutions might be. Having little understanding of the product domain, means not being able to ask the right questions. Without that skill and experience, the Team can easily get in trouble.
- Uses lots of actions, but very few words - big visible charts, directed question, artifacts of the teams work, self-created outcomes that demonstrate success as a team for that shared outcome speak much louder than words.
- Allows the team to experience life’s natural consequences and allows them to serve as their own teacher - the notion of fail fast and fail often is misunderstood in the business world by the teams. It is many times taken as we don't need to know what done looks like and we can have it emerge as we go. In Love and Logic, the paradigm means failures as a young child have much lower consequences than failures as a young adult. Learn to see what failures will occur and avoid them. Falling out of a chair at age 3 is much less critical than falling off the side of a mountain at age 16 with no protection - helmet or belaying ropes. Make mistake early on, the cost of mistakes later can be life threatening.
Summary
Scrum teams must act as teams in the Jon Katzenbach notion. The Scrum Master must act as the consultant parent for that team. The term Scrum Coach has two aspects. The parenting coach (consultant) and the coach found on sports teams. Agilist many times forget this. The sports coach is not a player. The sports coach may have played and knows the game. But the agile coach, like the sports coach, has insight to how to improve the performance of the team, that the team members themselves do not have. This is evidenced by the Super Bowl win of the Broncos and the World Series win of the Chicago Cubs.
