Break out of your rut!

I have been thinking about my craft.  A scrum master is a coach, therapist, and advocate for their team.  We have emotional ups and downs in the profession.  We are also fortunate enough to make a difference in the organizations in which we work.  It is rewarding but filled with the trade-offs professionals are confronted with.  This week, I wanted to discuss a constant force in the life of a scrum master: continuous improvement.

As a professional, it is easy to get into a rut.  Decision fatigue sets in, so you order the same thing for lunch or manage how you deliver software.  Routine and inertia are comfortable because they provide a false sense of security in an uncertain world.  Your heart could stop from a simple blob of cholesterol, or the company share price could crumble overnight, but thanks to the routine, we ignore these catastrophes.  Inertia is safe and secure.  It is also the enemy of continuous improvement and agility.  It is why scrum requires retrospectives.  The feedback allows everyone to evaluate how to improve. The development includes the product owners and the scrum master.

I was doing a product increment planning meeting for the product owners to coordinate releases and plan for the future.  On a whim, I decided to include a retrospective of the last quarter to understand where we are and where we are going.  A tense hour later, a few lessons were learned.  Using a four “L” retrospective, I wanted to understand how we were doing as a product development team.  The answer was unambiguous.  Some things that we could control had to change.  The retrospective included passive-aggressive conduct and a few choice criticisms pointed at me.  It was worth it.

Based on what I learned, I will conduct retrospectives differently with the development teams.  I will work with the product owners to help them manage their work more closely.   Finally, I will try to break out of my decision fatigue.  Continuous improvement matters, and if you expect it from others, then you should expect it from yourself.

Until next time.