Confession of a Productive and

Happy Scrum Team

Alida Cheung 2012@AlidaCheung

Not your usual retrospective

In April 2012, I facilitated an unusual retrospective for a mature and self-organized team, the Desktop Solutions Team at salesforce.com.

I interviewed them, like a journalist.

I have two goals

1.

Reveal the team to itself.

As a system, the team is naturally creative and intelligent, but they might not know that.

2.

Attempt to identify the profile of a productive and happy scrum team.

The Team

The Team

• Has been using Scrum for five years

• Has eight team members

• Team composition changed over time. In fact, only one original member remains on the team

• While team members came and left, the self-organizing, trust, and collaborative culture stays!

The Interview

What makes you a good Scrum Team?

• Good communication

• Mutual support on our tasks

• We are not afraid of raising concerns in our daily Scrum

• Being honest with each other

• We work hard

• We plan carefully so that we don’t get overwhelmed

What motivates you as a Team or as a Team Member?

• We care about the quality of our work

• We like our work

• We are proud of our product; our customers like it

• We feel accountable to each other

• Taking ownership and accountability and seeing it to the end

What are you most proud of as a Team or as a Team Member?

• “My deliverable is my identity!”

• Customers like our product

• Everyone knows what my Team does

• Working with a great group of people

I like the sound of it but the part that worried me was that we are moving so fast. Do we execute before thinking?

What was your initial reaction towards Scrum?

one team member secretly said to himself when he joined the Team

How in the world are we going to do

that?

Oh my god, they are actually doing it!I like it from the beginning.

Coming out of college, I read about these things. To

actually see it in action and seeing it done well is

amazing!

the original team member wondered at the genesis of the team

What got you over the chasm?

An open mind - “Funny how the thing you think would be a problem turned out not to be.”

Seeing the results - “It was a little hard for the team but the difference was amazing. Complete transparency!!”

Transparency -“Productivity shot through the roof. Everyone sees what I do everyday. Things start to move very fast.”

The realization that frequently inspect and adapt means the team won’t be off track beyond controland can always recover from mistakes.

What is the hardest to learn or adopt?

• Breaking up features into stories

• As a new team member, picking up the next available task even if I don’t feel comfortable working on it

• Be true and honest to the Definition of Done

What do you like about Scrum / Agile?

• Working towards the Definition of Done

• Know where we are every week, not just at the end

• Each little piece of Scrum has it’s own purpose

• The transparency

Along the journey, what good practices have you picked up?

• Make the tasks so small that we don’t have to spend time estimating them

• Short and productive planning meeting

• Not going into details in the daily standup

• Adjust the process along the way as needed to improve

What advice would you give to a new Scrum Team?

• Stay true to yourself• Be honest with each other

and yourself• Trust each other • Handle conflicts• Follow Scrum. They are

done for a reason. They do work

• Don’t be afraid to step up• Su-Ha-Ri• Observe how other teams

operate• Build you own team culture• Get a good ScrumMaster

That’s what real life Scrum looks like.

Real simple!