The harmfulness of Scrum Master double roles and what you can do about it

The other day I had an intense conversation with managers about the topic of double roles of a Scrum Master. One of the managers was also a Scrum Master. He and his superior defended the viewpoint that it is a great idea to have one person being the line manager for the teams and at the same time being the Scrum Master for the same team. Based on my observations about the typical dysfunctions created by this kind of set-up, I express my thinking that the Scrum Master must be a dedicated role if the organization is seriously wanting to introduce Scrum. As a result, I was labeled kind of religious and “inflexible to adapt to their thinking”.

My first learning was that it is pointless to convince others of your view and the statement “own versus rent” has proven itself once more. People need to generate those insights by themselves and not be told by a “guru”.

I dug up some of my old work on this subject and I present you with an overview of different combinations I have seen during my work life including my view on the pros and cons.

Conclusion

I can not recommend any of these combinations as the cons in all those combinations outweigh the pros. Most companies do the combination for saving money, and this is in IMHO the wrong place to start saving money. Having a dedicated Scrum Master allows this person to fulfill the role of an SM without conflicts of interest, and support, coach, help the teams, the PO, and especially work with the organization (in collaboration with the managers) to create the environment in which teams can succeed.

What to do about it?

The biggest hurdle seems that organizations need to do their own learning. Therefore I suggest you make experiments in your organization. Try out a dedicated Scrum Master in comparison to the combination you face in your organization. Reflect after 2-6 Sprints on the results, and then adapt based on your findings. Yes, this will take time and energy. The easier way might be to follow the principle of Shu-Ha-Ri and adopt the collective learnings from the past 15 years (and e.g. the empirically-created LeSS rule): The Scrum Master is a dedicated role.

Harmful Agile Adoptions by Playing with Words

This is an ad-hoc post written out of pure frustration with many so-called AGILE adoptions.

Everywhere I go, new fancy names get adopted for old concepts without any behavioral change. The most common is a mixture of Scrum terms and “spotify model” terms. It would be good if the adoption of a new idea came with a new word that describes that idea… but unfortunately, many agile adoptions adopted only the word agile.

On my desk, I have a translation manual for an organization I’m working with right now. It reads,

• Tribe -> Department
• Product Owner -> Outwards Project Manager
• Scrum Master -> Inwards Project Manager
• etc.

Why do organizations do this? My best good-intentions guess is that it is forced through the throat of most people in the organization by a well-intended yet naive manager who at least temporarily was enthusiastic about some new concept. Unfortunately, the adoption of the new concept was too short and too broad, leaving only words. Often the initiator of the change is so far away from the actual work that (s)he is unaware of the non-adoption as people use the right words.

This playing with words doesn’t only cause confusion and demotivation but is also harmful. Perhaps the fancy word that annoys me most is “squad” as that word didn’t even bring a new concept but was truly just a rename of the word “team.” WHY!?!? Is it because we have a preference for military originated words? Do we like that this word is also used in e.g. firing squad? The adoption of the word squad has been a puzzle for me. But this also causes harm as adopting a meaningless word for an existing concept makes it harder to learn more about that concept. Ironically, my Amazon search on “improving squads” led me to a book called “the cheerleaders.” Perhaps the books “group dynamics for squads, “coaching squads”, and “squadwork” are being written now? (I’m also waiting for Microsoft Squads).

Wish we could stop playing with words.

(Originally published by Lv Yi on Oct 3, 2019)

How could we create a path of least resistance towards one backlog?

A collection of multiple backlogs is NOT one backlog

Assuming that multiple teams are working on the same product, the following is a typical conversation between me and a friend in the community or a client in an organization or a student in my class.

[me] Do you have one product backlog?

[friend] Yes, we do.

[me] How do you create this one backlog?

[friend] We collect every team’s backlog to make one backlog.

This is NOT one product backlog, but a collection of multiple product backlogs. They are not the same thing, as one product backlog means to prioritize as a whole, while a collection means to prioritize separately.

Accommodating constraint in actual backlog

[friend] But, if we prioritize as a whole, we will find that some teams may need to work in domains that they are not familiar with. Though we wish to have one backlog, we currently still have that constraint.

[me] So then?

[friend] We have to take our constraint into account when creating the actual backlog.

That way the collection becomes the actual one backlog. In this solution, we accommodate the constraint when creating the actual backlog, and further consider it as the desired backlog. It is illustrated by the B1-loop in the following diagram.

[Note: The meaning of “value in desired backlog” and “value in actual backlog” is the prospective value that may be obtained by delivering those items in the backlog.]

Meanwhile, as the tension caused by the gap between desired backlog and actual backlog goes away, the fundamental solution of removing the constraint, illustrated by B2-loop, does not move forward. Thus, the constraint will stay forever. This creates the “eroding goals” dynamic. For more information, please refer to “Drifting goals: the ‘boiled frog’ syndrome”.

Maintaining desired backlog to keep tension

[friend] What to do instead?

[me] Maintain the desired backlog in order to keep the tension

Let’s maintain two backlogs – desired backlog and actual backlog, so that the tension is kept. This avoids “eroding goals” and creates the path of least resistance towards one backlog.

One backlog for one team

The same dynamic may exist in one-team context too, though it is rarer than in multi-team context.

Sometimes we may accommodate the constraint from team members when creating the actual backlog and mistake it for the desired backlog.

In that case, maintaining the unconstrained desired backlog keeps the tension, thus creating the path of least resistance towards the real one backlog for one team.

The path of least resistance

Here are some further thoughts on the path of least resistance.

1. Personal vision

In fact, the path of least resistance is the name of a book about personal mastery, which is one of the five disciplines for organizational learning.

What do you want to create? That is your personal vision. The gap between the personal vision and the current reality provides creative tension, thus creating the path of least resistance.

2. Organizational vision

Not surprisingly, another discipline for organizational learning is shared vision. What does an organization want to create? The resulting creative tension creates the path of least resistance too.

This is similar to what I wrote in the article “from change resistance to limits to growth” – create the common goal to be higher than status quo, in order to avoid the change resistance.

(Originally published by Lv Yi on May 7, 2020)

I often get this question – what do you measure while adopting Agile?

The conversation usually goes like this:

[me] What is it about adopting Agile?
[him] … doing Scrum.
[me] What effect do you expect after adopting Agile?
[him] higher efficiency.
[me] How would you define higher efficiency?
[him] … finishing more tasks.
[me] Why would adopting Agile lead to higher efficiency?
[him] Agile means higher efficiency, doesn’t it?!

The thinking is fuzzy, to say the least. I suggest to focus on reasoning before measuring.

Let’s take Specification by Example (SbE) as an example of a concrete agile practice. What do you measure while adopting SbE?

Practice and Purpose

Firstly, we learn about SbE by asking 1) what is SbE, and 2) why do SbE ?

A good source of learning is of course the book “Specification by Example”.

1) What is SbE?

“Specification by Example is a set of process patterns that facilitate change in software products to ensure the right product is delivered effectively.”

Suppose that among those process patterns, we choose to focus on the below two at the beginning of our initial adoption. We dive deeper into them.

• Specifying collaboratively
  “Instead of relying on a single person to get the specifications right in isolation, successful delivery teams collaborate with the business users to specify the solution.”

• Illustrating using examples
  “The team works with the business users to identify key examples that describe the expected functionality. During this process, developers and testers often suggest additional examples that illustrate edge cases or address areas of the system that are particularly problematic.”

2) Why do SbE?

There are various benefits from the whole set of SbE process patterns. Let’s focus on the benefits from “Specifying collaboratively” and “Illustrating using examples”. In other words, let’s understand the purposes of these two specific practices.

“Specification by Example helps to improve the quality of software products, significantly reduces rework, and enables teams to better align analysis, development, and testing activities.”

There are three areas of benefits.

• Higher product quality
  “Specification by Example improves collaboration between delivery team members, facilitates better engagement with business users, and provides clear objective targets for delivery - leading to big improvement in product quality.”

• Less rework
  “Specification by Example helps teams establish a collaborative specification process that lowers problems in the middle of an iteration. Most teams have significantly reduced or completely eliminated rework that occurred as a result of misunderstood requirements or neglected customer expectations.”

• Better work alignment
  “Specification by Example enables teams to clearly define a target that’s universally understood and objectively measured. As a result, many teams find that their analysis, development, and testing activities became better aligned.”

The above reasoning could be summarized as:

Only after getting this clarity we can go to the measuring part.

“Practice has purpose, and we measure both the practice and the purpose.” I learned this from David Hussman in a private workshop for Odd-e in 2013 – one of the most memorable experiences with “the dude”.

We may come up with the following measures.

1. For the practice
   • %stories done with SbE (measuring the extent of doing SbE)
   • %stories with cross-functional conversations (measuring the extent of specifying collaboratively)
   • %stories specified with examples (measuring the extent of illustrating using examples)
2. For the purpose
   • #defects due to misunderstood/neglected requirements after done (measuring product quality)
   • #defects due to misunderstood/neglected requirements during the sprint (measuring rework)
   • %stories reaching completion at the end of the sprint (measuring work alignment)

Causal Diagram

“The Book of Why” introduces causal diagrams as a tool to move from correlation to causation. Causal diagrams are similar to causal loop diagrams in systems thinking – they are both based on causation.

After some understanding of the practice and the purpose, we can reason further with finer-grained causation chain by identifying intermediate steps. Why does SbE lead to higher product quality, less rework and better work alignment?

The below causal diagram illustrates our reasoning.

Then, we can measure the intermediate steps, so as to learn the whole chain of causation via validation or invalidation. Note that some variables are harder to measure than others. For example, “amount of rework” is harder to measure than “internal defects”. We don’t have to measure all the variables. With a few intermediate ones, we build our confidence in this causation.

We may end up with measuring:

• %stories of doing SbE (i.e. specifying collaboratively and illustrating using examples)
• #internal defects during the sprint
• #external defects after done
• %story completion at the end of the sprint

Conclusion

We need to reason about causes and effects, before getting into measures. On the other hand, measuring can also improve our reasoning in two senses: 1) thinking about how to measure increases the rigor in the reasoning, and 2) measurement results validate or invalidate the reasoning.

Notice that measuring here is for learning and improving. See my previous blog “Two Guidelines for Metrics” for further reference.