A few month back, we applied for a stadium pack of tickets during the upcoming Rugby World Cup in New Zealand.  This week we learned that our Eden Park application was accepted.  We’re going to New Zealand, baby!!

Our pack includes tickets for the opening match of New Zealand vs Tonga, Australia vs. Ireland, New Zealand vs. France, Fiji vs. Samoa and England vs. Scotland.  Now we have to figure out what matches we want to see.

Related posts:

1. Churchill Cup 2008

The Spirit of Scrum borrows heavily from what I call the Spirit of Rugby: teams, composed of players of different physiques and skills, are united by a drive to win through a strong sense of camaraderie, the boundaries of fair play and good sportsmanship.  Teams that are proficient in the basic skills, respect the Laws are embody the Spirit of Rugby are rewarded with victories.  It is no surprise that the number #1 and #2 teams in rugby, South Africa and New Zealand, embody these principles and year after year are ranked as the top teams in the world.  What I have found is the same Spirit of Rugby in the smallest amateur division is the same Spirit of Rugby seen in the international teams.  More so than the Laws, it is the Spirit that connects the amateur teams with the professional teams.

In Scrum, you need the same spirit in order to succeed.  Everyone on the team has something to contribute and when you compete, you do not hold back.  You leave everything on the pitch.  Half measures do not equal success in rugby nor in business.  Sure, some people may get more glory than others, but their time in the spotlight is due to the hard efforts of the rest of the team.  When the team is united, there are no obstacle can stand in their way.  Just like in rugby, teams that embody the Spirit of Scrum are linked no matter what the size nor the domain.  They are all playing with the same game. 

Related posts:

1. Learning Something New
2. Welfare CSM 021 – June 7th & June 8th in San Diego

So here is what I learned this weekend going out for rugby for the first time:

1. Catching a rugby ball is not that hard. When I showed up for the drills people were in circles throwing the ball and I was really nervous that I would have to catch the ball. DUH! It’s rugby, you need to catch the ball. Catching a rugby ball was not that hard once someone showed me how to do it.
2. You need to be running before you call out “Ball!” Since there are no forward passes in rugby, you have to be moving on your teammate before shouting for a pass. If you are just standing still, i.e. flat on your feet, you will not get a pass and if you do, you’ll get tackled and the play is over.
3. Pick your head up when running with the ball. You cannot find the holes in the defense if your head is down. Also, don’t be afraid of the tackle – you’re not made out of glass.
4. Listen to what the experienced players are telling you. They already know how to play the game and if they say you’re offsides, you’re offsides. OTOH, if you ask them a question, they will explain a law or game strategy to you. Since this is a beginner’s league, they are tolerant of errors, but learning how to play the game is your responsibility.
5. Rugby is hard. I thought I was physically fit, but when you run around and play rugby for two hours (yes, that is how long practice was), it takes more energy than you think. Working out and getting fit in the gym is no substitute for playing on a team.
6. I am not the best, but I am not the worst. Since I did not really understand how to play the game, there was not a lot in my performance that was worthy of praise – I was always out of position, offsides frequently, my passes were sloppy, etc., etc. – but a few of my teammates still found the opportunity to praise some aspects of my play when I did something right.

Related posts:

1. Why Crouch, Touch, Pause…Engage?
2. The Spirit of Scrum
3. Churchill Cup 2008

The winners at the tournament were England, Ireland and Canada. I had hoped the Argentina team would do better, but they wilted in the second half to Ireland. The England\Scotland match was very close up until the end and was some excellent “footie”. Unfortunately, the US Rugby Team lost and sadly have a long way to go to be competitive in international rugby.

I have provided some pictures from the England\Scotland match.

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1. Going to Rugby World Cup 2011!!!
2. Going to Agile 2009!!
3. Learning Something New

Over the years I have worked with teams, I have tended to avoid these electronic tools since they do not support the dynamic I am trying to foster when I work with people. I want people to talk face-to-face with each other and I want them defer complexity and detail until the last responsible moment, i.e. the Lean concept “decide as late as possible”. I want to encourage the growth and development of collaborative, cross-functional, self-organizing teams. IMO, these tools hinder the creation of that dynamic more than help. [Please note, I am ONLY referring to Teams and Product Owners that are co-located in the same work location and same time zone. I am not so arrogant to say electronic tools are not applicable for geographically distributed teams across multiple time zones. Distributed teams need different tools.] For the longest time, I could not articulate why, well now I know.

These electronic tools are management tools for reporting up, they are not tools the team needs to create a collaborative, cross-functional, self-organizing team. There is no reason why a co-located Team of 8 to 10 people should be using something other than task board and Excel files to track their own progress, especially when they are starting out. The unfamiliarity of self-organization and collaboration requires simple of the tools that encourage communication. There is only so much you can write on a stickie note or in a field in Excel. To be successful, you have to get out of your seat and talk to someone.

With so many of these electronic tools, it is so tempting (and so easy) to fall back on “bad” habits of command-and-control. These enterprise tools with their workflows, forms to fill out, work groups, web services and clean looking graphs we can email with a click of a button, encourage us forget that we are trying to become more collaborative, cross-function and self-organizing. We sometimes get so wrapped up in giving the tool the data it wants and follow the process IT lays out for us, we forget the reasons why we wanted to be more Agile. IMO, the only things these tools buy us is the ability to cleanly report up to management. So why does the Team allow a management tool to govern their own Team interactions?

Before you shut off your brain and dismiss my criticism of these tools as “just another Agile zealot”, I want to be very clear I believe Teams MUST be visible and accountable to management. Teams MUST report their status to management with the metrics they expect in ways they can understand. Not to do this is not only is this disrespectful, but the Team is in for a surprise when management kills their Agile initiative because they are viewed as “rogue”. Providing visibility and accountability is where I can see how these enterprise tools can be valuable to the enterprise, but filling the tool with the information it demands is not the responsibility of the Team. In my ideal world, the Team should not even know the tool exists – you basically only need as many licenses as you have Teams and Product Owners. It is the ScrumMaster’s (or the XP Coach’s) responsibility to translate the Team’s metrics into the tools format since their role is to provide the “management deflection shield”. No one else should be entering information into the tool but the ScrumMasters (or Coaches) and the Product Owners (or Customers).

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1. Multi-team Retrospectives: Valuable or No?

…well, most of what I do every day is help teams use and implement Scrum (even though I got to Scrum through XP). The name Scrum comes from rugby, so I figured this will serve as a good title as I talk about how I use Scrum to solve problems and assisting people so they can work better and smarter. I have been a Certified ScrumMaster since 2005, but it has only been since July 2007 where I have been using Scrum with multiple teams in a very large organization.

For those of you unfamiliar with rugby, you might be asking “What is a Scrum?” and “How does this help us work better and smarter?” Wikipedia has a long description of what a scrum(mage) is, so I will leave it to the experts to give you the details. The picture from the Rugby World Cup 2007 (held in France) shows you what a scrum looks like. The only comment I want to make about a rugby scrum is before the ball is “put-in”, the referee will call out, “crouch, touch, pause…engage”, and then the scrum half rolls the ball under the pack and then all the pushing happens. The point of a scrum is to get possession of the ball and a team that loses its put-ins just gave up possession (normally a bad thing).

Which ties very nicely why I chose this title for my blog: my job as ScrumMaster is to make sure the rules are followed. This might sound really stupid and probably anal retentive, but it is very challenging, interesting and very important. Scrum is a balanced process framework where each actor\player, has a very specific role with certain rights and responsibilities.The authors of Scrum were very wise to recognize that if you want Teams to be self-managing, collaborative and accountable, in addition to having a very basic process; you need to have a referee to blow the whistle from time-to-time to ensure people are respecting each other, the process and meeting their goals. However, do not make the mistake that the ScrumMaster has more authority than they really do. The ScrumMaster merely blows the whistle; it is up for the Team to devise the solution.

I migrated my old blog content to this site and this post refers to the old name of my blog – CEN 01/31/2009

Related posts:

1. The Spirit of Scrum