A full bag-o-scrum

I just completed a two day scrum master training class. Between classes I was also reading a book on my Kindle called "User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development." Now because I was reading it on the Kindle and I wanted to know more about the work scrum, I used the lookup feature. I selected a line of text that included "scrum" and chose "lookup" this resulted in a list of the words on that line with a brief definition. Selecting "scrum" I was given a thorough definition of the word. I knew it was a huddle of sorts in rugby. I did not know that it included people from both opposing teams. Nor did I know that the game ball is dropped into the middle and players struggle to get the ball out toward their side of the scrum. Scrum is used in British slang to mean a disorderly group of rowdy people. And the word "scrum" is an abbreviation of "scrummage." I have not yet confirmed if there is any correlation to the American football term "scrimmage."

So, a humorous elevator pitch for scrum can be "With scrum, our team will become a disorganized crowd of people who will start of by dropping the ball then fight to retrieve it."

More seriously, the training was an eye-opener in the sense that I have been doing scrum on teams for 6 years, and yet have never experienced scrum in its full implementation. The training has shown me that there are parts of scrum that get omitted in one team or another. These omissions are often the result of key decision makers not understanding or being resistant to scrum. Two key roles in the system are the Scrum Master and the Product Owner. In my experience, the product owner has either not existed, has been filed by the team manager or scrum master, or has been filed by a product manager who does not understand the product owner role or does not buy off on scrum.

Th product owner in scrum is part of the agile process, and must expect that the objectives in each sprint may not all be achieved. The sprint is a 1-4 week iteration of development, verification, and delivery. The benefit of managing the priorities of the next features in an agile way is to maximize the effectiveness of each sprint deliverable. The delivery will be more compelling if the features are related to some unifying story or experience from the users perspective.

One agile aspect of this role involves organizing the features such that if some are pushed out of the sprint and not completed the deliverable is still compelling. Also that if more items are pulled into the sprint that ones which improve the experience or at least don't detract from the theme are chosen.

Reviews: Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations

It's been a few years since I've last read these books, and rereading these again this week reminds me just how awesome they both are. From helping us understand ourselves, to helping us better understand others, these both give us the communication tools we need to navigate very challenging conversations.

Crucial Conversations
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Crucial Confrontations
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Reviews: Meatball Sundae & Chasing Cool

These two books discuss recent trends in product design and marketing. More current companies understand their customers intimately, design products that appeal to these customers, and allow these customers to evangelize the products to others. More traditional companies tend to design products, sprinkle on some internet viral marketing techniques and "cool sub-culture" slang and endorsement.

Both books endorse following path of genuine customer connection, cooperative product creation, marketing, and support.

Meatball Sundae
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Chasing Cool
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Review: Made To Stick

This book is filled with great stories and explore why some stories and products remain stuck in our memories. This was without a doubt one of my favorite reads last year.

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