Blog

Scrum War Stories Recap

Last night we had wonderful participation for our first Scrum War Stories dinner, with 9 folks from 7 different organizations showing up at West Main. The discussions we had were wide ranging and for me the value was in the interaction with my peers!

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The main themes that came up over dinner from my POV were:

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    Change is hard. People reach a comfort level in their own niche, and dont see the larger problems challenging the business that they need to change to overcome.

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    Oldstyle approaches to supervising project teams dont work. With 3 week Sprints, there isnt enough time for an outside group to influence the Scrum team. I argued that instead of an outside group supervising/inspecting the Scrum team, they need to merge. They need to be members of the team, or be the Product Owner.

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    Strong Product Owners are key!

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Scrum War Stories Folks

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Scott Stults mentioned that the term “Sprint” really is a misnomer, because you arent sprinting to a finish line, but instead maintaining a constant pace, that allows time for other things like process improvement, people on vacation, technical development. He proposed the term “Relay”, which I really liked. In a relay, different people handle the baton, and the results arent measured on any individuals performance, but the performance of the team as a whole.

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Not sure how we get the Scrum world to change from “Sprint” to “Relay”, but I may start trying to use it in everyday speech.

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Many thanks to everyone who showed up, and a big thank you to Aaron Buchanan from Inova for cosponsoring the event with me, it wouldnt have happened without his enthusiasm.

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