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СпутникиРНSpaceXРоскосмосNASAWhen in early 2010's Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd came up with the Agile Coaching Competency framework, they clearly mentioned that being a Lean-Agile Practitioner is important for a person to be a successful Agile Coach. And since Scrum Masters are expected to do agile coaching, it remains true for them too. The problem is, in my work with numerous Scrum Teams I have observed that the Scrum Masters have no understanding of what it means to be a Lean Agile Practitioner. A majority of them are simply certified on Scrum (PSM/CSM) and for them agile coaching is all about ensuring Scrum events (which some call ceremonies) happen every sprint, schedule meetings, run activities, update jira boards and the work is done. Many of them don't even know what their key accountabilities are. But that is a topic for another article.In this article I want to create some clarity about what it means to be a Lean Agile Practitioner.I assume most Scrum Masters are already aware of Agile as described in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development that was drafted back in 2001 by 17 visionaries including Ken and Jeff. So I am not going to spend much time dwelling onto what it means to be an Agile practitioner. In the simplest possible terms I would state that any person who uses any of the mechanisms like Scrum, XP, Crystal Clear that enables them to deliver value early and often in an iterative and incremental way is an agile practitioner. The focus should be on using the practices not just supporting them.
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The Lean PractitionerAsk anyone what a Scrum Master does and you will hear about events, artifacts, accountabilities and impediments. That answer is not wrong, but it is incomplete. Scrum did not emerge in a vacuum. The roots run deep. And Scrum guide clearly calls out that Scrum is based on Empiricism and Lean Thinking. A Scrum Master who understands only the mechanics can get a Scrum Team started but a Scrum Master who understands the principles beneath those mechanics will transform the team in a high performing unit. Being a Lean-Agile practitioner means to see the framework as an expression of values and principles, not a set of practices.Now lean thinking is a vast subject in itself and exploring it in small post is not feasible. But most of us work in software world and there is a great book called "Lean Software Development" where the authors Mary and Tom Poppendieck have distilled their Lean wisdom in seven principles. Here I would like to explore those principles from the Scrum Master's point of view.1. Eliminate WasteSoftware development where you are churning code into valuable applications, waste is often elusive and it is often difficult to determine what waste is. It can come up in many forms though. A feature waiting for approval, team members waiting on each other to complete tasks, a quick sudden sync up with stakeholders which has no agenda or simple gold plating of code. This all is waste. A Scrum Master who is lean practitioner will be able to identify this and call out. They can challenge backlog items which are sitting on the backlog but no one cares about them; work in progress that is blocked or not getting to completion over last few sprints and much more. When the Scrum Master coaches or facilitates removal of such impediments, it is actually eliminating waste.2. Amplify LearningSoftware development is all about discovery. Scope evolves, needs evolve, customers evolve, stakeholder expectations evolve and so does the Scrum team. Lean thinking treats every sprint as an experiment that generates knowledge. A practitioner Scrum Master ensures that the knowledge generation continues with the inbuilt mechanisms of Scrum - Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective. Besides that the Scrum Master also promotes experimentation and learning through out the Sprint in form of hackathons, guilds, KT sessions, PoCs and spikes.The Scrum Master's quiet work is making it safe to be wrong early, so the team is right sooner.3. Decide as Late as PossibleScrum is all about Inspection and Adaptation. Inspection results in best Adaptation when there is Transparency. Any decisions that are made with least possible knowledge lead to false inspection and adaptation, resulting in false commitments. A Scrum Master who is a Lean practitioner will promote options to be open till the last responsible moment. Ex: A Scrum Master may help the Product Owner to prevent the urge of refining the backlog items or planning the backlog items five sprints in advance. Similarly within the team, they coach toward emergent architectures and design that preserve flexibility. 4. Deliver as Fast as PossibleAgile has always been about having a sustainable pace to create value. Lean thinking adds on to it. It promotes the idea to find the shortest sustainable lead time - the time that is needed to convert an idea from its conception to actual value. A practitioner Scrum Master enables this, shortest sustainable lead time by helping the team see where work queues up, where dependencies stall progress and where bottlenecks are being created. By visualizing the bottlenecks and helping the team overcome it, Scrum Master enables better value delivery.5. Empower the TeamPeople closest to the problem are the ones who are best suited to solve the problem. However, if these people are constrained then even though they have the right knowledge they might not be able to overcome the challenges. Organizations practicing Lean learned this long ago and hence the principle. Scrum also supports the same through the idea of self-management, but self management doesn't happen on its own. It requires alignment and boundaries. The Scrum Master creates the alignment and boundaries deliberately. And in order to create those boundaries, the Scrum Master has to bring their practitioner knowledge to the teams to know which boundaries will create desired self-management and which will fall with the first sign of resistance. Scrum Masters also coach leaders around the team to shift from directing to enabling. 6. Build Integrity InA quality check at the end is not quality, it is a checkbox, a phase getting completed. Often it will lead to more problems than solving problems for the team. A practicing Scrum Master understands the importance of technical and engineering excellence for agility. They don't just support but drive the conversations about test automation, continuous integration, refactoring, and a Definition of Done that delivers a releasable increment. Under business pressure when team tries to cut corners, the Scrum Master helps make the cost of technical debt visible to the Product Owner and stakeholders, so quality trade-offs are made consciously rather than silently. 7. Optimize the WholeHaving a Scrum Team that delivers value consistently sprint after sprint and yet doesn't become high performing, is possible. This often happens when systemic challenges, organizational constraints impede the teams growth. Optimizing just the teams efficiency seldom creates desired results. A Lean-Agile practitioner Scrum Master understands it. They move beyond the team boundaries and surface impediments coming from adjacent or organizational processes. Making these impediments transparent for the management to take action and improve the overall system. This is what makes the Scrum Master, a proponent of change, a change agent.Conclusion:None of these principles asks the Scrum Master to do something outside Scrum. They are ingrained in the way Scrum operates. A practitioner Scrum Master moves beyond asking “are we doing Scrum correctly?” and starts asking “is value flowing, is the team learning, is the system improving?” That shift from guardian of a process to enabler of underlying values and principles is what distinguishes a Scrum Master from an effective Scrum Master who is also a Lean-Agile practitioner. The framework is the beginning of the craft, not the end of it. P.S. If you are interested in becoming a practitioner Scrum Master then explore my mentoring program or if you are just getting started then have look at my upcoming trainings for PSM and PSM-A.
| # | Наименование новости | Тональность | Информативность | Дата публикации |
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