ScrumMasters Should Not Go Fly Fishing for Cattle
Posted by Chris Sterling on 09 Jan 2008 at 07:18 am | Tagged as: Agile, Leadership, Scrum
In a recent Certified ScrumMaster course that I taught in Seattle we conducted an exercise where a group drew a series of pictagrams describing what a ScrumMaster should not do. One of the groups drew the following picture:
While debriefing the exercise with the entire class a comment caught my attention:
“What is that supposed to be? A ScrumMaster should not go fly fishing for cattle?”
The entire room broke into laughter. The group that drew the picture informed us that this was describing how the ScrumMaster should not use a whip to get things done. I immediately wrote down the comment and it became a theme throughout the rest of the course.
That night I actually spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out how this comment was relevant to the ScrumMaster role. Here is a short list that I have come up with so far:
- Instead of “A dead ScrumMaster is a useless ScrumMaster”, this phrase could be used to describe how trying to tackle issues fully before those involved are ready can be dangerous, may get results you are not looking for, and will not help the team improve.
- It could also be an example of fixing impediments without understanding what the actual root cause is.
- Or pushing practices onto the team without considering the highest priority impediments or when the team is not ready for the changes involved.
Some of these may be a stretch but I have found the exercise to be beneficial overall. It has allowed me to think deeper about Scrum and the role of the ScrumMaster. On top of that it was fun!
If anybody is reading this blog entry out there, I would like to hear your ideas about what the phrase “ScrumMasters should not go fly fishing for cattle” could be relevant to Scrum. Please add comments to this blog entry and I will look at and accept comments soon after they come in.
Hi,
Great article and something I may use in a future class!
You may want to check out http://www.implemetingscrum.com for examples of things that are very similar to this blog entry.
If anything, you may see some great cartoons you can share with your teams or friends around the world who are using some of these techniques.
Hope this helps!
- mike vizdos
http://www.michaelvizdos.com
http://www.implementingscrum.com
Ironically I got here via a link entitled something like ‘Certified ScrumMaster isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on..’.
Kind of proves his point doesn’t it?
I would also like to see pictagrams describing what a ScrumMaster should do. Too much is made of what SM shouldn’t do. This is the only role on a Scrum team that receives so much negative attention. You could easily write about what devs, product owners or quality folks shouldn’t do. And they would all be valid.
Anyway, back to your original questions - which I do think is interesting.
What jumps out at me is the fact that the pictagram shows the ScrumMaster and team member as different species.
So I see this as don’t separate yourself from the team. Participate in the same activities as the team. Or, don’t go fishing for the team, go fishing with the team.
Also, don’t whip the team, whip impediments.
Cheers!
In my mind that means scrum master should not tackle all the development problems. You can reword this if you want.
Good day Dan McCarty,
I have found that teaching the CSM course and then following up with individuals after to see how they have used what they have learned has uncovered both good and bad. If you are interested only in the certification and not how you are going to use the teachings for the betterment of your teams it could be a waste of time.
Scrum is something that cannot be done effectively without practice. It is based on the concept of inspecting and adapting your process based on results (empirical process control). The CSM course has been developed to get people started on the road to using the Scrum framework so that current impediments can be made visible and worked on.
If you are interested in speaking with me about this and maybe discussing your concerns with Scrum training I would be more than happy to do so. Contact me through the about page.
Thank you for your comment and I hope that whatever your software development experiences are that they include fun and effectiveness.