Product Owner: “Please code this feature”.
Developer: “I can’t code this, until I receive a better spec”.
PO: “Just go ahead, I want your input to this as well”
Dev: “Alright”
— Developer codes it like he believes is the best, and show it to the Product Owner —
PO: “Why wasn’t _this_ included?”
Dev: “It wasn’t a part of the spec”
PO: “Well, I think it is kind of obvious, and I wanted your input as well”
Imagine you’re in you car and you’re going full speed on the highway. You are listening to a traffic announcement in the radio, telling you, that your planned route is jammed. You know it is the shortest route to your destination, but you are in a hurry to get there fast. What do you do?
Continue reading “Driving the Scrum Highway!”
I often hear from ScrumMasters and Agile Coaches stating, that you cannot have a succesful Scrum implementation without a Product Owner. The importance of the Product Owner can not be discussed, but there are “everyday situations” out there where a Product Owner for some reason is not available, as much as desired, and for sure won’t be for period of time. Telling the Product Owner to be more available won’t help anything, and calling off the desire of becoming more agile, doesn’t seem to be the solution as well.
A software development team, had been “doing Scrum” for years, since it was decided that Scrum was the “way to go”. A classic. All meetings were conducted, but gave no or little value. It was just accepted like “that’s what happens when Scrum meets reality”. Failed sprints were the standard, frustrations were building and unfortunate leadership mecanisms were “needed” to get things done.
When I was appointed as the ScrumMaster, I quickly realised that I had to do something drastically to gain the team’s trust to Scrum, and to build the team’s trust in me, as a ScrumMaster. Especially because I do not have a developer background. I had to relaunch Scrum in a way I had never tried before…
So I said: “Let’s call off Scrum!”
Agile Reflections 