The development team must be a shark.

As a boy, I thought sharks were the most extraordinary creatures alive.  They were ultimate predators who created panic at beaches across the nation.  Steven Spielberg made one of the biggest movies featuring a shark.  Sharks were a staple on public television, and today, we can enjoy an entire week of shark programming on Discovery.  The more I have learned about sharks, the more I admire them. As a Scrum Master, I have used sharks as a metaphor for the operation of a good scrum team.

A shark is a living fossil.  It has not evolved substantially in 200 million years.  When you are the top predator in the ocean, natural selection is not a powerful influence.  However, it does give a shark several disadvantages.  The brain of a shark is smaller than the brain of a dog.  Sharks do not breed quickly, and the creatures plunge into irrational frenzies with the presence of blood and prey.

Sharks' biggest disadvantage is that they have primitive gills. Unless a shark is swimming with its mouth open, it cannot breathe. This is a significant disadvantage because most fish today have gills that can filter oxygen out of the water without swimming. Thus, a shark is doomed to swim from the moment of its birth. A shark must swim, or it dies.

Software development teams should use the shark as a metaphor for how they should operate. Organizations need to keep swimming and moving forward.  A team needs to continually gain new knowledge and techniques.  A team has to deliver software regularly.  A team has to respond to a changing environment.  A team must keep swimming forward.

As a scrum master, it is up to you to keep the team swimming.  You need to ask compelling questions.  You must insist on delivering software into production at regular intervals.  Finally, a scrum master should encourage the team to pursue “Healthy Ownership,” with collective responsibility for outcomes.

If you cannot inspire the team in this fashion, you will have a drowning shark, and you will be dead in the water.

Until next time.