Happening to read this, I was struck by how many people (within ICT industry) in India have the reverse problem. As a Viennese resident remarks- “If you live here all the time, you have nothing to compare it to – and you don’t know how good you’ve got it.” or to paint a picture for a reverse problem “…. and you don’t know how bad you’ve got it.”!
I relate to this due to a similar personal experience on my first visit to foreign shores (London) when a local remarked how polluted London was. Arriving from Bombay (Mumbai), I remember thinking the poor fish lacked sense of any sort. But maybe it was me who lacked perspective.
What has all this to do with Scrum? Many, many people have no idea of how a well chosen and tended team can feel, perform and delight all. So many projects are in a death march mode or in an apathetic semi-daze for so long, that such a state seems normal! Just as the Viennese are inclined to overlook how well off they really are in their city, the s/w dev teams here are not exposed to how well (comparatively) things can be run.
Is this a plug for Scrum? Partly, but mainly it is an attempt to show that there are much better means to live within a software development project.
Is this relevant to the times? Yes, in spite of all the huge numbers of people claiming to use Scrum, the percentage who do it properly is very small indeed. Scrum-but will not make your life better, Scrum will.
I’ll attempt to provide a sense of how one can help people see a brighter horizon. Most software development teams are under pressure to deliver on very optimistic estimates of poorly thought out functionality. On top of this teams will quickly settle into a habit of creating poor quality functionality. All this leads to continuous rushed activity that results in comparatively little progress. This is why people spend late nights in office. How they use their time in office is another story. However too much overtime over extended periods will be accompanied with lower mental efficiency and strong tendency to make mistakes. Why do you think in competitive sports each team tries to put the other under pressure? To encourage mistakes of course. What are managements doing when they put pressure most of the time?
First thing you need to realise is that a normal day needn’t be tense and rushed. It can be comfortable but purposeful. Good planning to deliver a reasonable amount of functionality will provide best results.
A cross functional team results in testing being done very close to development, which means that we get a lot of feedback within a sprint. Also multiple perspectives help in detection of mistakes earlier.
More importantly we get serious external (customer/customer-representative) feedback at end of every sprint. Therefore we come to know how we are doing from a very early stage. At every step of the way we have a chance to improve at a reasonable pace. This is almost a dream in a waterfall project. Everyone pretends they are already very competent or even perfect. Then at the end, when they all are floundering, and then it doesn’t end….
Where as in a a well tended team, the support every one gets is very enabling, a good ScrumMaster is there to see to it. It provides a high level of ‘safety’. This supports people to very quickly get better, be open to learning from their mistakes. These may or may not be mistakes of individuals, but a culture of blaming one another is strongly discouraged.
To summarize: A good project delivery structure (delivery and feedback every sprint), a supportive cross functional team and picking up a reasonable amount of work per sprint will together result in a steadily productive, yet comfortable feel for Scrum projects. Do it properly and you’ll then realise how badly you’ve been having things for so long.
Chaordic Commentary 