A Scrum Master’s job can be daunting — a story
This is a true story about a company that decided to embrace Scrum. This included self-organizing teams. It included the notion that the Development Teams know best what works for them:
“Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional. Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team.” — SG
This was propagated extensively. The company even has the ambition to be a showcase for the industry on how to work with Scrum.
The company -as all others- has many challenges. Last year someone from the management team decided to spend a large sum for a tool that would solve one of their major challenges. This choice impacted every Scrum Team. This while no one had any say in this and people in the Scrum teams use other products that proved to be working. Still the manager wanted to push it at all costs. A team was put together to come up with a first version with limited functionality in November. The manager also was able to convince other managers, including head of Development. With that the tool was forced upon the teams.
Many people were really upset by this. Something was imposed by management, the tool was very expensive and on top of that many of the professionals didn’t like the tool.
The way this all was enforced was contrary to everything the company wanted to be and said to be. This was a major impediment for many Scrum teams:
doesn’t management trust them to make their own decisions?
will management cease to support their adoption of Scrum (which obviously includes self-organizing teams and empiricism?)
does management understand what the implications are of this decision?
Needless to say that it caused a lot of unrest. Hence a Scrum Master put the following impediment on their company impediment wall: “Teams have to use a tool that is enforced by management; teams aren’t allowed to self-determine this, didn’t even have a say in it”.
The impediment wall exists to discuss and tackle impediments that can’t be resolved by the Scrum Master (or any other person) without (management) help:
Our Company Impediments Wall
How we increase cohesion and enable faster improvementmedium.com
This wasn’t an easy step. This company impediment wall is the place where management meets with Scrum Masters and anyone else interested in impediment resolution to discuss. This included the part of management that did enforce the tooling. But a Scrum Master should be willing to put his/her head over the parapet. It’s part of what a Scrum Master should do:
“Removing impediments to the Development Team’s progress” — SG
And
“Leading and coaching the organization in its Scrum adoption” — SG
And
“Helping employees and stakeholders understand and enact Scrum and empirical product development” — SG
There were some fiery debates at that company impediment wall. Some persons were not willing to give in or to acknowledge that the approach had been wrong.
From the company impediment wall one Scrum Master had an action to discuss with the head of Development together with two other Scrum Masters. They told him the whole story and the situation that they were now in. The head of Development was disappointed by how it came to this. He thought that everyone was on the same page regarding this tool and now this proved to be totally not the case. He did not want that large amount of money to be thrown away. Yet he gave the Scrum Masters freedom to list all the alternatives that could fulfill the needs of the teams on this topic and come up with a proposal.
They quickly assembled a team that wanted to work on this request. A few months later they had a proposal including a demo that pleasantly surprised the head of Development. The proposal tackled everything, including things that were very difficult to achieve with the expensive product.
For the Scrum Masters it was crunch time: does the company really go for self-organization or is this only the case when the stakes aren’t high? Do they switch to top-down management when the pressure is on?
Management in the end informed everyone that they did’t have to use the expensive external tool anymore, that the choice is with the people that know best: the members of the Scrum Teams. The Scrum Teams choose the alternative proposal, but that is in the end not important. What’s important is that the decision was brought to the right level.
Still a large minority within the company doesn’t grasp what Scrum is about and as a result doesn’t know how to interact with Scrum Teams. This can lead to destructive situations. This makes the way how the situation as described in this article was handled very important as a showcase for the whole company.
Did you like the article? Then it would be awesome if you’d clap 👏🏻. I am also very keen to learn what you think about this topic.
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