The Blog

Retro Scrum – coaching with metaphors

published October 24, 2010

“I am wearing multiple hats”, “hats off to the team”, “He was using black hat tactics”, metaphors – we all use them more than we realize. In addition, we have different ways of learning. My learning style is very much visual, so for me it is natural to draw things and learn by grasping big picture first before digging into details. Others learn by listening, but generally metaphors help people understanding new concepts and ideas.

According to wikipedia,

Metaphor is the concept of understanding one thing in terms of another

When coaching, pithy metaphor works like a charm. As people are naturally trying to understand new information by connecting it to previous knowledge, everyday related metaphor can be very effective. In addition, by presenting new information in multiple contexts you will make it easier for a learner to recall that data later. Below is an example of mapping Scrum into everyday cooking metaphor presented in retro theme (I also wanted to practice using Photoshop).

Scrum works like a big happy family (Scrum team) preparing to throw a dinner party (release new feature). Mom (product owner) has written down a menu (product backlog) and requests Dad and daughter (team) to prepare shopping list (sprint backlog), buy groceries and prepare platters (sprint). Family’s eldest son (Scrum master) will keep family’s small children (shields the team) out of kitchen (war room), makes sure that car works, and ensures that dad concentrates on preparing food rather than drinking beer. However, mom will want to check that correct menu is prepared, so she will check platters often (sprint review) and ensures that her party vision will happen. She will probably want to serve food shortly after it is ready, so that quests (users) won’t have to eat cold hamburgers (release often). Dad and daughter must keep kitchen clean (refactor) and try to avoid messy room (technical dept).

There :)

The image is available at Flickr and as A3 size with Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons license.

Samuli @ 18:37 (2 Comments)

tags: Coaching, Scrum, Social psychology

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Monthly learning sessions

published January 12, 2010

I have started to organize monthly learning sessions. The idea is that I choose a topic suiting to current sprint, gather information on the topic  and finally organize a half hour event where we discuss about the topic. So far we have had sessions on java serialization and character encoding that sound like basic topics, but as it has turned out, people have not known every detail about them and have had presumptions that have been proven wrong. Of course juniors know less than seniors and it is a great way for seniors to pass knowledge forward. Nice addition is that this requires me to dig into the subject thus increasing my knowledge, because teaching about a topic is the best way to understand the topic by your self.

Samuli @ 19:31 (No Comments)

tags: Coaching, Scrum

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Passing a Scrum master role forward

published December 18, 2009

My coaching week is almost over. During this week I have been working as a developer while mentoring our temporary Scrum Master. We decided to change roles as it was OK with a customer and team member had interest in working as a Scrum Master. Week has been a success and I have learned lot about my assets:

• I still have skills to work as a developer :)
• I have ability to work as a coach.
• I am pretty good at grasping big pictures.
• I have an intuition about upcoming problems.

Also by watching Scrum Master to work, I clearly see a lot of value in keeping daily scrums short, focusing on impediments, and keeping the team on a sprint track. If you have not tried changing roles, I recommend you try it.

Samuli @ 21:52 (One Comment)

tags: Coaching, Leadership, Scrum

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