I'm a London based Coach who has specialised in using Scrum. I've coached well over 200 teams across a number of industries & have felt grateful for the opportunity to serve. I've been involved in a number of large scale Agile Transformations & greatly enjoy sharing tips & stories on how the theory does & often - doesn't work in reality!
I see what you're getting at, but the phrasing of this question is beyond weird. You presume that the PO knows if the team is building the right thing, which is rarely the case. Honestly, very few Product Managers know if they're building the right thing, and precious few leaders and executives as well. The test for "are we building the right thing?" can only be answered by the customer, and their feedback should not happen early in the sprint. This is why you want working software in the customers' hands as soon as possible. You need their reaction to know whether to persevere or pivot.
Hello Mr. Jem Jelly, I was recommended to take your course, and I will be doing so between now and June 2024. I will be taking your advice as I believe this will help shape my life tremendously so! I truly do appreciate you and what other courses do you teach outside of CSM? And where is your data course for June 1st? Thank you for your time!
Thank you for this video. I’ve been looking for this practical knowledge and mapping videos for years but NONE is available. Now I wish he elaborate more on the planning/charter. Also, how do you Manage the budget as a scrum master in this hybrid PM/SM role?
Where is the link to find out more? It's not in the description nor in the comments. Your profile doesn't list a website address either. Doesn't inspire much confidence when these basic things are missing. Unless I'm blind and can't see the links.
So, the three rules that a person without a seat at the table with the team, business, or product owner needs to figure out a date from the quality the team controls, the scope the product owner controls, and the cost that the business controls.. The advice is "Figure it out". Second, I need to work with developers on figuring out estimations quickly from nebulous requests so that we can give the business a date when we don't use dates on our backlogs, just priority. Doing all this as a servant leader, knowing my work, if done well, is creating an environment for others to thrive in. That the wins are the team's wins, you made the space for them to do fantastic work and that's what a good servant leader does. Now, Undermine all that because you need to prove your worth to people who don't recognize it, even if they benefited from it. I like where your head is with these philosophies, which are some of the most significant problems with the position. When you have figured out how to deal with them, I'd be on board to listen. Also, I'm just a dude ranting in the comment section.
I really appreciate the honesty in this reply. I hear you, so much expected in helping delivery but so little empowerment given to the role. I think it's the old "take action and ask for forgiveness" mantra in many ways with this type of role. I'll be sharing more on my views regarding the "how" soon.
I dont see this as c&c coming from Bezos. It would be c&c when left to the team to be expected to deliver expectations from this memo with no alignment/ direction, planning, roadmap, requirements. 🤷♀️ But maybe this is the PTSD ive acquired 🤪
Most companies have enterprise and solution architects that outline all the patterns as to how systems are supposed to communicate with one another across the organisation ... and beyond. And it's typically via API. But the are not cheap to build, so what often happens is that the business pressures technology to do it 'tactically' (ie cheap and nasty) and they will circle back and fix the tech debt another day. And they never do as the project budget expires and it becomes part of the furniture. There are 1000's of ways this is couched in corporate speak to CYA. I feel that Bezo's 'correspondence' was actually aimed at those business heads / areas that eternally do this via technology. As technology now has a piece of paper from the CEO that says if they technically do anything otherwise to the mandated architectural patterns, then Jeff will smite the people responsible ... So don't even farquin ask us Mr Business says technology.
I don't agree with this. The PO doesn't just get to see the done stories at the review/demo. An effective way to ensure fast feedback during the development timebox would be iterative acceptance of the work by the PO ahead of the demo (which will include external stakeholders). That way, the dev team get the iterative feedback on wether they are building the right thing or not.
Although it’s true that a technical PO can curb the ability of the developers in a scrum team to self organize and to come up with creative and innovative solutions (!=ideas), it is also a reality that the standards by which small to medium sized businesses hire „developers“ has become so low, that the time it takes for a junior dev or even scrum team to self organize and become productive is an order of magnitude greater than the desired launch date of a product or service, even if it is stripped down to the bare MVP. Some companies try to build more cost effective versions of existing B2B enterprise solutions, which is a herculean endeavor at best, but without senior software architects, developers or Product Owners/Manager it is insanity. In this case the Technical PO could be something lile an adviserial role to educate a company on how to build and manage software products. Is like the scrum master role, but for the whole organization… It would be nice if all products bete simple innovative B2C apps that offer immediate benefit through superb UX and technical innovation. The reality also is that there are many brown field solutions, and companies thought after years of milking their cash cow to death it would about time to bring their legacy solution to a new tech stack but with bells and whistles… and scrum, because someone heards somewhere „waterfall is bad“… in this cases I think an (in-house) advisor may help, that is what I believe could be the responsibility of a technical PO
In as much as this information is good to get used to agile practices, truth is Scrum isn’t an entry level role and it will be extremely rare to see a scrum role with less than 3yrs needed. An average hands on experience I have mostly seen required in 5yrs and above. It’s a highly competitive role now and some companies are evening combining the roles with candidates with backend skills.
When you say “the truth is” you’re really saying “in my experience” and I hear you. My experience of being around this industry for almost 20 years is that you have to start somewhere. A person on a team can use SM skills and then turn it into a role or simply keep it as skill as a team member. I agree, the market is more competitive because of a few reasons one being less jobs and less demand - but everything happens in cycles for all markets. In terms of combing it with writing code, there is nothing about Scrum which suggests that you need to be a software developer to be competent in the job.
@@theagilerooms I do agree with your point but my perspective is for someone not in I.T nor having one foot in the door already as a developer. Referring to someone just trying to transition to the SM role from an outside role let’s say a Teacher or Nurse aide. It much easier for a Dev to transition to the role because the person has first hand experience on what is been done compared to the one mentioned above.
Kumar here Jem ..... you make huge difference .... it is a Scrum Lesson we get , extra information that motivates us to make us better in life and job .... keep up the good work.. see you in uk if i have a chance...
There's also a anti-pattern where you do the planning, and THEN set the goals. and when you do that, the goals are nothing more than a summary of the sprint items, and this isnt really what a "goal" should be! So at least set your goals at the *start* of planning
Agreed, without vision, those at the team level that may be looking up would likely be confused hence why set a sprint goal from the bottom? However the problem I’ve seen over the years in addition to those visionaries that don’t have one or can’t set a goal, is that the team is working on so many things such as one team mate supporting app x, another app y, three others on production support, so spread out working in their own box you’d seriously question why they are even a Scrum Team. So how do write that one goal these inside the box players can rally around and serve as the compass for the Daily Scrum? It’s a tough one for sure and I’m pretty close to giving up on it.
