Dysfunction

Benjamin Day
@benday | www.benday.com
Dysfunction?
Things that hold back a successful Scrum Team.
Bad news.
 There might not be a cure.
You might have to manage them like
a chronic condition.
Spot them and get ahead of them.
 Scrum Dysfunctions.
People / Culture Dysfunctions.
The “Greatest Hits”.
 Scrum Dysfunction’s “Greatest Hits”
 Product Owner Problems
- Disengaged Product Owner
- Unclear Product Owner

 Hero Disorder

 Changing Sprint Lengths

 People / Culture Dysfunction’s “Greatest Hits”
 The “Voluntold” Problem

 Culture of Fear

 Burnout
Product Owner Problems
 Role of the Product Owner
 Maximize the business value delivered in the product

 Provide the vision

 Translate the needs of the business or Stakeholders into the Product Backlog

 Prioritize

 Answer questions about scope, functionality

 Make the tough calls

Not a lot of requirements documents in Scrum.
The team can talk to the Product Owner
in something close to real-time.
 The Product Owner should expect to spend
approximately 20% of his/her time with the team.
 Typically, the Product Owner has
deep knowledge of the product or domain.
The Product Owner is busy.
Product Owner Dysfunction #1:
The Disengaged Product Owner
 Is Your Product Owner Too Busy?
 Are they able to respond to the team's questions quickly?
 Are they able to attend the required meetings?
- Sprint Planning?
- Sprint Review?
- Sprint Retrospective?
 Are they able to spend time doing Product Backlog Refinement?
 Is the Product Backlog 'Ready'?
 Is there 3 to 4 Sprints worth of 'Ready' Product Backlog?
 Are you getting any/lots of 'surprises' at the Sprint Review?
If the Product Owner isn’t around enough,
it will cause problems.
You’ll need to explain to the Product Owner why
his/her time is so critical for the team.
Product Owner Dysfunction #2:
The Unclear Product Owner
Who is the Product Owner?
There can’t be more than one.
Are the Product Owner’s decisions
getting overruled by superiors?
The Development Team needs a
clear source of direction.
 A lack of clear direction
will cause major problems.
 Next up:
Hero Developers
Hero Developer Dysfunction
“Team Lead” Dysfunction
 Two Versions:
Benign & Malignant
 Benign Version:
Best Intentions  Undesirable Side Effects
 Malignant Version:
Ego-driven  Awful Side Effects
 Downsides of Hero Developers
 Can hinder self-organization

 Can hold the team back from swarming on PBIs

 Eventually become bottlenecks

 Sometimes become quality problems

My name is Ben and I struggle
with Hero Dysfunction.
Here’s how my Hero Dysfunction manifests itself.
I’m a consultant.
I get hired by a company to
“raise their game.”
 New architectures.
New engineering techniques.
New levels of scale.
New software delivery processes.
 Teach & Get the Teams Going On…
 Test-driven Development
 Layered Architectures
 Dependency Injection / IoC
 Automated Build, Test, & Deploy
 Quality Assurance / Test Case Management
 User Interface Automation Testing
 Load Testing / Performance Tuning
 Scrum
"Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day.
Teach a person to fish and you feed them for a
lifetime."
I want the teams to learn and apply the skills.
I want them to self-organize.
 Here’s where benign
Hero Dysfunction creeps in....
“Ben, what do you think we
should do about X?”
“Ben, what do you think we
should do about Y?”
“Ben, what do you think we
should do about Z?”
“Ben, tell me what to do.”
“Coaching” turned into “commanding”.
Self-organization is toast.
The Malignant Version of
Hero Dysfunction
There’s a hero developer.
This person is awesome.
And they know they’re awesome.
 They legitimately know everything
and they have superb technical skills.
They’ve got answers and they’ll give it to you.
 Got a problem?
They’ll drop everything and fix it.
 Crisis?
They’ll avert it.
 Got a deadline coming?
They’ll pull on the hero suit and
make it happen.
Sounds great, right?
 “Absolute power corrupts
absolutely.”

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

“Lord Acton”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton
 “Absolute power corrupts
absolutely. Great men are almost
always bad men.”

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

“Lord Acton”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton
Malignant Hero Dysfunction:
They’re a god and the rules
no longer apply to them.
 Malignant Hero Dysfunction
 Everything’s written with unit tests?

 Everything’s compiled as part of an

automated build?

 No patches made directly against “Fuggedaboudit!”

production servers? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fuggedaboudit

 Everything passes code review?

 Definition of Done?
 Malignant Hero Dysfunction
 Everything’s written with unit tests?  Kills self-organization

 Everything’s compiled as part of an

automated build?  Kills team-orientation

 No patches made directly against  Kills team morale

production servers?

 Everything passes code review?  Introduces quality problems

 Definition of Done?
 Introduces technical debt
 Next up:
Changing the Sprint Length
Your Sprint Length Shouldn’t Change
 The Sprint Length Dysfunction
 Teams change sprint length based on work

 Teams change sprint length based on holidays or employee availability

 “Let’s see…last sprint was 2 weeks.”

 “But this next PBI is really big and Neeta’s on vacation so…”
 “…let’s make this an 18 day Sprint.”
 Don’t do this.
It breaks your Velocity data.
Average Velocity with a Shifting Sprint Length?
Sprint Days Velocity
Sprint 1 7 6
Sprint 2 20 15
Sprint 3 30 22
Sprint 4 18 14
Sprint 5 10 15

How would you get an average Velocity from that mess?

 Don’t Change Your Sprint Length
 Each time you change your sprint length, you trash your velocity numbers

 Only change it if it’s causing a problem

 How to Choose a Sprint Length

http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/real-world-scrum-team-foundation-server-2013

Go to “Sprint Planning” module. Watch the first chapter.

“Overview & Sprint Length”
 Next up:
People / Culture Dysfunctions
 People / Cultural Dysfunction’s “Greatest Hits”
 These are organizational dysfunctions

 Dysfunctions related to “systems” of people

 The “Voluntold” Problem

 Culture of Fear

 Burnout
“No one can be told what the Matrix is.”
 Organizational systems coaching says
you need to “reveal the system to itself.”
Wake the system up to itself.
Help the system to gain some
awareness and introspection.
 It won’t be easy.
Once you acknowledge the problems,
then you can start to (at least) manage it.
Making promises on your behalf or otherwise
forcing your “cooperation”.
“Voluntold”
“Turns out the Army’s a little understaffed.”
 “I’m going to need 4 volunteers to
go on the ground in Iraq for a while.”
“No one?”
 “Ok. You, you, you, and you.
Thanks for volunteering. Come with me.”
Voluntold in Software:
Small & Large
 Voluntold (Small)
 Boss: "Hey…I need you to do yada yada yada. How long is that gunna take?"

 Developer: "Uhhh…that'll be probably at least a week."

 Boss: "A week's too long. I need it tomorrow morning. Thanks."

 Voluntold (Large)
 Boss: "Hey…the sales guys promised the customer that we'd have proof that life exists on
other planets as part of this release."

 Team: "That's going to be a problem."

 Boss: "Why's that?"

 Team: "We're not sure it can be done."

 Boss: "Well, the contract's already been signed soooo we need it next week. Feel free to put
in all the overtime you need and come in on the weekend. Toodles!"
Other people are making promises that
they expect you to make good.
 Most often:
disconnect between sales organization
and implementation organization.
It’s hard to fix.
 Chip Away at the Problem
 “It doesn’t make anyone look good when we miss”

 Important to push back

 Disagree without being disagreeable

 Ask to be consulted in advance

 Share your Product Backlog

 Next up:
The Culture of Fear
Culture of Fear
 “Culture of Fear” Dysfunction
 Everyone’s terrified  No acknowledgement of the
complexity of software
 Lots of time spent avoiding being
wrong rather than actually being  Unrealistic schedules
right

 Ultimatums
 Punished for mistakes / bad news

 No trust  “Bus tossing”

Scrum needs truth, collaboration, and
courage to work well.
Scrum has a tough time under
‘Culture of Fear’.
‘Culture of Fear’ tends to start from the top.
Consider making an argument
based on employee retention.
 Employee Retention Under ‘Culture of Fear’
 Good people tend to leave

 All the highly-motivated, top performers leave

 Then the top performers recruit all the good people who are left

 All the people who aren't so good and aren't so motivated, stay

 You’re left with a weak team

Burnout
 Comorbidity
 Medical term

 A disease that exists with another disease or tends to appear with another
disease

 Examples:
- Substance abuse tends to go with mental health problems
- Kidney disease tends to go with diabetes
Comorbidity for ‘Culture of Fear’ is ‘Burnout’.
 Burnout
 “…long-term exhaustion and diminished interest in work.“
- Wikipedia

 "Job burnout is a special type of job stress — a state of physical, emotional or

mental exhaustion combined with doubts about your competence and the
value of your work.“
- Mayo Clinic
- “Job burnout: How to spot it and take action”
- http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/burnout/art-20046642
People can get burned out.
Teams can get burned out.
 Are You Experiencing Burnout?
 Have you become cynical or critical at work?
 Do you drag yourself to work and have trouble getting started once you arrive?
 Have you become irritable or impatient with co-workers, customers or clients?
 Do you lack the energy to be consistently productive?
 Do you lack satisfaction from your achievements?
 Do you feel disillusioned about your job?
 Are you using food, drugs or alcohol to feel better or to simply not feel?
 Have your sleep habits or appetite changed?
 Are you troubled by unexplained headaches, backaches or other physical
complaints?

Mayo Clinic, http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/burnout/art-20046642

 What Causes Burnout?
 Lack of control
- “An inability to influence decisions that affect your job — such as your schedule,
assignments or workload”
- “a lack of the resources you need to do your work”

 Unclear job expectations

- “If you're unclear about the degree of authority you have or what your supervisor or
others expect from you, you're not likely to feel comfortable at work.”

 Dysfunctional workplace dynamics

- “Perhaps you work with an office bully, you feel undermined by colleagues or your boss
micromanages your work.”

Mayo Clinic, http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/burnout/art-20046642

 What Causes Burnout?
 Mismatch in values

 Poor job fit

 Extremes of activity

 Lack of social support

 Work-life imbalance

Mayo Clinic, http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/burnout/art-20046642

 As Scrum Master, What Do You Do?
 Be supportive

 Work on the underlying causes

 Or coach them to care less about the ‘irritant’

 Suggest they seek support

- See a therapist?
 “You’re more likely to develop burnout if…”
 You identify so strongly with work that you lack a reasonable balance between your
work life and your personal life

 You try to be everything to everyone

 You work in a helping profession, such as health care, counseling or teaching

 You feel you have little or no control over your work

 Your job is monotonous

Mayo Clinic, http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/burnout/art-20046642

 Sounds kind of like a Scrum Master
is in the sweet spot for burnout, huh?
 You’re in charge but not in control.
You’ll tend to want to “fix” things for the team.
 Tips from one Scrum Master to another
on how to maintain your sanity and avoid burnout…
Try to remember that everyone
makes their own decisions.
“You can lead a horse to water but
you can’t make him drink.”
If the team is ready to improve, you can help.
Otherwise, there’s not much you can do.
 Right or wrong,
we must all make our decisions for ourselves.
 Try to remain detached.
Don’t let problems eat you.
Learn to let go.
 It’s your job to help the team.
It’s not your job to save the team.
Summary
 Dysfunction’s “Greatest Hits”
Scrum Dysfunctions People / Culture Dysfunctions
 Product Owner Problems  The “Voluntold” Problem
- Disengaged Product Owner
- Unclear Product Owner  Culture of Fear

 Hero Disorder  Burnout

 Changing Sprint Lengths

 Next up:
Common Questions & Objections