Communities

I am strong believer of communities. Whether you call it Community of Practice or Competence Network or Learning Network - there are elements of learning from each other, sharing with each other and social networking. 

I am a social person. I like to be close to my colleagues. I like to share my experiences and thoughts with others and likewise I love to hear from others about their experiences and their thoughts. What are the things to try, what are the learnings, what are my challenges, what are their challenges. Good long discussions in matters where we don't all agree and share our viewpoints and opinions. Place where it is okay to disagree and have tough discussions. 

While working as Agile Coach I utilized Scrum Master CoP for coaching sessions. Especially I remember our sessions where we discussed Scrum Values. All Scrum Masters had their first ever position and all teams had just started their Agile Journey. Personally I believe we need to understand principles and values in order to be able to be really Agile. Otherwise we just blindly repeat instructions given for us. 

The Scrum Guide lists five values that all Scrum teams share: commitment, courage, focus, openness, and respect. While discussing I learned so much about each individual. I saw how some of them struggled with these values. We worked in environment where they were not used to be open. Openness instead of hiding problems and issues until the very last moment to be told. That was maybe the most difficult journey they had to take. For me it was important to have these discussions with them

In my Scrum Master positions throughout the years I have participated many Scrum Master communities. When I am there as Scrum Master I feel much more comfortable as then I am one of them. I don't have to be anything else than myself - not a coach or a trainer who knows more. I can ask all the stupid questions or share all my concerns knowing that others are as curious as I am, that they want learn and share. Sharing is caring!

But it is not only learning aspect which make me want to be part of these communities. The social aspect, building relationships, sharing your feelings, getting peer support - all that is very important for me. I don't wanna be alone. I want colleagues around me. 

Today I had meeting with my current colleagues who are soon to be my ex-colleagues. I leave my current position and soon, after a short break, I start new adventure in totally different environment BUT all alone. I don't have any Scrum Master colleagues. Or I do kind of have. Those two guys who I am replacing as they concentrate on their other roles in their teams. I for sure will miss my colleagues and today they really surprised me by sharing their "one words" with me. This kind of community is one of the best. Not because they obviously appreciate me but because we care for each other. 

Reminder for me today is showing your appreciation. Not only when someone is leaving but in your daily life. Even when life is hard you can still find something good in everyone and boost others just by saying "well done". At least for me that brings some joy to myself also. 

Communities are not only for learning and sharing - there are also for caring.  

Talk, don't report!

English is not my native language. Even though I think I am pretty good in English I have my weak points. One of them is my ability to handle numbers. For some odd reason it takes time for me to translate in my head numbers from English to Finnish. And other way around - when I talk, I always think numbers in Finnish and translate them in my head into English. 

But at the same time when this is my weak point I can utilize it. Quite often when I have started to work with new Scrum Team I have noticed in Daily meetings team members are not talking what they are working. 

Instead of telling "I have started building database connection. I discussed with system team and we found out that ..." I hear "I continue with JIRA-123". 

Instead of "I have deployed code to test environment. All unit tests passed and this change can be tested further as soon as we have a connection to external test environment" I hear "JIRA-223 is now ready to be tested."

Every time when I ask them to start talking instead of reporting I hear WHY. Quite often team members have been totally fine with this approach and don't understand why they should be telling anything more than JIRA issue id. So, I have learned - I don't ask them talk or stop to report. I just ask them to stop using numbers and explain them why it is difficult for me to understand what it is going on. In the beginning they change they way of talking in daily to make me, their Scrum Master, happier but in the long run they have noticed and mentioned sometime later during Retrospective that actually Daily meetings give more value to them with this habit. Amazing! Specifically I remember how I struggled with teamV and how quickly they learned not to use numbers and if I ever referred something with JIRA issue id team reminded me all together "NO NUMBERS!"

Another antipattern I have seen with teams is to utilize JIRA board during meeting in the way that only those team members talk who have issues assigned to them. When Daily meeting starts team member who is assigned to top issue In Progress tells what he has been doing. In that way they have run through In Progress issues - only persons talking are the ones to whom issues are assigned. 

This happened also when I joined teamG. After a few Daily meetings I realized that there are many team members who don't ever say anything during the meeting. JIRA as tool allows issues to be assigned only one person at the time. Especially our business experts and qa specialist worked in pairs and also often issues were assigned to developers. They got totally surprised when I one morning said:

"Today we do this differently. I have this ball here. I now throw the ball and the one who catch it start talking. When you are ready you throw the ball the next one."

Silence. Then the person with ball said "I don't anything assigned to me in the board." 

"BINGO! Exactly. You don't have anything assigned to you but we are interested to hear what you have been doing, what you plan to do and is there anything preventing you to do so."

This was beginning for something amazing. This team started to talk and we started to get things done quicker, we found out impediments faster and team members started to support each other much more than earlier.  The impact was even bigger I ever imagined when introducing this practice to the team. 

Daily meeting is not a status meeting. Team members are not reporting anything to me. Daily meeting is the possibility to share and learn. When I hear any team member saying "I don't have anything to report" I put note to myself in my notebook. Next time I have 1:1 meeting with that team member I take this up and explain what is the purpose of the meeting and why they should never consider to be obligated report anything to me.