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Back in 2005, I had just finished working on my last XP team and about ready to begin work for a large defense contractor in San Diego (HUGE mistake!!). I had some free time between jobs and noticed that Ken Schwaber would be in San Diego to teach one of the very early Certified ScrumMaster courses, so I signed up. It is one thing to read about Scrum on the Internet (which is where most of the information about Scrum was found back then) and another thing to hear Ken describe how it works in person.
What I remember most about that experience was Ken’s urgency on the need for change in the software industry. Over and over again, Ken emphasized that our behavior as software professionals has been contributing to most of the challenges we experience in our industry – late delivery, poor quality, broken commitments, low morale, bad relationships, staff turnover, low profit margins, lack of innovation, etc., etc. Ken identified two factors as source of these challenges. One, the willingness of software professionals to cut quality as management demands the impossible, aka deliver a squirrel burger. Two, we would rather tell lies and give excuses, explanations and justifications for our shortcomings than confront the truth – we kinda suck at building high-quality software.
In the classic story of “MLB Tix”, Ken asked people to role play a scenario where a software team over-promises the head of Major League Baseball (MLB) a fully functional ticket reselling site before opening day of the upcoming baseball season (remember this was 2005 so ticket reselling did not exist then). Unfortunately, the site is not ready on opening day and all Hell breaks loose. Now a representative from the software team (unlucky CSM participants) have to explain to the baseball commissioner (Ken) what was going on.
Group after group gave Ken excuses, justifications or promises of a quick fix and each was sent back to their tables by an angry Ken Schwaber. After six failed efforts, one person from the audience finally just asks, “OK, so what would you do in this situation?” Ken’s response, “I would tell the baseball commissioner the truth. We screwed up and we are sorry. We want to make this right, so we will work with you until we find a fix.” This response has stuck with me for ten years because of its simplicity – just be honest and commit to working with the customer to fix things. That is what any customer wants to hear.
Here are the real big changes I have seen with Scrum since beginning in 2005.
Top Ten Articles You Didn’t Read: Best of the Best
That Happened in 2005? Retrospective of the Big Moments of 2005
Mastering the Agile Mindset: The Next Ten Years of Scrum