 Is anyone going to be on the line? We'll be up to near us. Don't know, let's see if we find out. Are you going to record if no one comes on? I swear. Please don't swear. Good evening. Hello. I can't imagine this. Hi. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Where are we? What's the name of this place? This is in the Metadata, so they'll know. Is that one person on line? Yeah, we've got to watch it. Who'd have thought it? This time alone. 5% Who is it? Hi. Hi. What's your name? Where'd you come from? Oh, I've gone. What a mistake. Anyway, I'm drinking The other lager. The other lager. Because we're at The Other Palace, which is a theatre in Victoria, in London. We've been out for some culture. Yeah, we've been enjoying the arts tonight, haven't we? You know us. We're going to see showstoppers. It is late. It's late than we expected, to be honest. Who's that? Vadim. Yeah, it's late than we expected. But, um... Hi. We're going to prepare a bit going on. Hi. For a busy day, we managed to grab a quick bite of dinner, and then just across the road from my hotel, was the showstoppers. And if you've never seen the showstoppers, I thoroughly recommend it. Paul's seen them before. I hadn't. But they improvise a musical every night. Yeah. So they take suggestions from the audience. This is in the west end of London, so you're in the theatre land anyway. So they take suggestions on types of musicals or composers of musicals from the audience. Vocations. They try and weave them into two 45-minute acts. And it's very, very good. How they do it, I don't really know. Improvising a play is one thing. Improvising comedy is another. And singing. Improvising singing and comedy. Incredible. And Irish dancing. Yeah. It was good. It was very good. So I was completely in awe. And I was chatting to two people next to me who'd never been before. Well, one person had seen... I think one person had seen them before. But they were kind of... They were of the opinion that it was too good to not be scripted. Really? One of them was. So I'm loving it. I'm loving it. But I'm not convinced that they haven't scripted some of this. And I was trying to explain that that's... They've got techniques that will help them. I'm sure they have. And this is their job. This is how they get so good at it. They do it every day. But also part of it I think is just believing that you can do it and you will do it. Yeah, a lot of it is... There are tricks. There's a lot of repetition. A lot of callbacks to old... They won't always think of new things. They'll go back to... They reintroduce old songs even... So especially at the end, don't want to spoil it for everyone, but they'll tie it back to a song that they've done earlier on. Yeah. And if they're really struggling with the words, you notice they repeat a verse or repeat a chorus. There's a lot of them on stage as well. So they can bounce ideas or bounce things or ideas. Have you tried that before? Yeah. Only one out of the six needs to come up with something. But it... Well, something that's related to what we were doing today in a way. Coaching's a little bit impromptu in that you can't script what someone's going to come to you with. You can't script how a conversation's going to go. Yeah. And you kind of have to trust the process in a way and just roll with it and see where it goes and believe that it will go somewhere good. And also believe that you have the ability and the... the capability to deal with wherever it goes. Again, you're looking for cues, aren't you? Audible cues, visual cues from your client or whoever you're speaking to. Yeah. Opportunities to... not to dominate, but to add. One of the... I'll tell you one thing I noticed. That's my wallet. One of the things I noticed that I think helped them and I think helps a lot of teams and a lot of coaches is keeping it simple so they didn't try to overcomplicate it with ridiculously long words. No. So they're... it's easier to rhyme a simple word and build a simple word into a... into a song than it is to build a complicated word into a song. And keeping... coaching simple, keeping work simple makes it more effective. So there is a... there is a technique and I've done some song improv. Give us a song. I've done some... Give us a venue. Give us a musical style. That's a suggestion from the audience. Paul is right now. No, Paul won't. I'm not good enough at it. There are some... I mean, some of the cast are actually in here now. I'm tempted to get them over, but... no, but... jazz. But a lot of it is about thinking... you only think... to... you only need to think of two words that rhyme. Think of the first word and then obviously you use the first word on your first line and you're just going to think of the word that rhymes for the first line. It is a lot more simple than it... than it might appear. A lot of it is fear. It's people are ruled by looking stupid, looking wrong and if you get past the... the fear of being wrong or stupid then it doesn't really matter what you say. As long as it... you know... there was lines in that that probably felt flatter than there was one. Well, going wrong has two... two benefits. So first of all, the woman who thought it was too good to not be scripted I actually joked with her and said so you actually want them to screw up. To prove that it's real. And so that helps. That's natural. But also a lot of the... the better engagement they've got from the audience was when they struggled to find a word that rhymed or they got something wrong. They spilled over each other's words or people enjoyed that. And that makes people seem normal. Yeah. One of the characters was too keen to get involved but he realised he was acting in a character and was going to start abusing his own position. His own wife. And that just caused more hilarity rather than shame. That's good. So, yeah, if you are... if anyone watching this or even watching this on repeat will be in London or anywhere near London. The show stop... We're not going on commission for this, by the way. But the show stop is here until the 16th of March in the other palace theatre. What street are we on? Palace Street. That's Palace Street. That is Palace Street. It's literally by Buckingham Palace. So, six people online, yeah. That's probably a record for us. Which is the time of day to do it. We didn't ask before what time of day people would like to do the live stuff. And this was completely kind of a... Howdy. Howdy. How boy. That's Corey. Oh, Corey. Is that Corey Bryant? I haven't said what I'm drinking, by the way. It looks... It is. So, this looks like... It is like this. Like Coke. But it's got a dropper vodka in it. It's just a drop. It's a dropper vodka in there. I don't know what vodka. It's Belvedere vodka. No. Syrup. It all tastes the same to me. Syrup. It was you. All the cricket. Oh, there's a cricket going badly. Cricket's going badly. So, we talk about Smajasta. We win. We talk about... Yeah, Smajasta. Go on then. Give us the topic. We'll improvise. Any questions? We've got Robin. We've got the Dean. We've got Corey. Who else have we got? Wendy's has a good comment for you all. Give us an agile topic. And a musical style. And a location. Remember that everybody else can see your comments. It's just us. Component teams. Component teams. Okay. Well, all right then. So, component teams. Functional specialists. Who are excellent at one particular thing. The opposite of what we saw tonight. Yeah. I would say. So, you've got... But then you've got... You've got musicians. So, there is a musical element to this. Yes. There was three musical people. The music was provided. The lighting was provided by a specialist. True. So, the things that you can see off stage. Those are still things that have to make that work. True. Notice as well. So, the narrator. There's a narrator who kind of gives you... Do you think he was the same narrator every time? No. So, I know that they're rotating. So, Pippa is over there. She sometimes... Who's on first name terms. Check me out. But no. But other people... So, they switch the narrator. But they don't generally speak to the musicians. But they have... So, the narrator tonight. I can't remember his name. But he also was playing the guitar. I don't even know if he was adding accompaniments. So, he's still T-shaped. But this is the thing that a lot of people... Careful. I'll say a lot of people. There's a common assumption from a lot of the coursework that we get around. We ask... One of the questions we ask is make an argument between feature teams and component teams. And it seems like the agile answer is feature teams. Yet. Yet. Still within agile organisations, there could well be a place for component teams. And in balance with feature teams. And I think that's actually quite a healthy thing. Okay. To have an element of kind of technical or expertise for complex area. That perhaps needs a sense of maybe a quicker, a shorter cadence to get more emergency or more tactical fixes done within a complex technical space. Component teams more valuable in the obvious domain. Complicated domain rather than complex domain. Ooh, we're onto a bit of connecting now. So, I'm not putting down that. I'm saying that... If you can analyse and you can... But it's more of a known area, isn't it? It's more of a known component. So, I want to do a value stream map to show what the weight stays... Oh, it's disappeared. That's back. I want to do a value stream map to show the weight states between the component teams. I've done that before on any tips. Trying to show why feature teams are better, in my opinion. So, you want to run an experiment to prove something that you already believe? To disprove that component teams are useful. I think you should run any experiment with an open mind that you might be wrong. But value stream mapping... So, for me, the two big differences... The big difference between the two states are efficiency and effectiveness. So, component teams are very good at being efficient. They should be very good. They are capable of becoming very, very efficient. Feature teams probably won't. They won't be efficient. There will actually be quite a bit of dead time in feature teams. But they will be more effective. They will get more value done rather than be more utilised. And I'm saying between complex and complicated. So, if you can perfect something, if you can work out how to do something the right way and be effective in a somewhat predictable environment, then a component team will probably do a better result. Also, it's a relation to definition of done as well. If you've got a scrum team that can't get done done, then having a component team to cover the aspects of the lifecycle that are outside of done is probably the best way to deal with an imperfect scenario. I also wonder whether there's an attraction or a repulsion. That's the right word. Opposite of attraction? Yeah. For people to work in those teams. I'm a bit disconnected now because I haven't developed for a long time. There are two different types of benefit, I think. You can get a lot of stuff done very quickly and focus if you're in a component team. You get very, very good at something. And you have a bit more certainty and a bit more predictability. Is that an attractive thing to a developer to see there's a growth of knowledge in a specific area. I can become more specialised. And I can get deeper. And there's maybe a reward in that, a recognition in that. And there's a comfort there as well. There's a comfort. But equally, you don't really grow wide, you grow deep. And so for people who get bored quite quickly, feature teams give them exposure to other areas. So I think it's a different... I would be attracted by both of those personally at different times. I would like to have something a little bit more predictable and repeatable and work with peers on something and develop an expertise in something. I do also get bored. And the idea of pitching in and doing something that I'm not an expert at but am able to contribute, I like that as well. What's that point? In tears of mapping out a value stream before, aren't you? Are there any tips on doing that? Just observe. Watch. Follow the... Not follow the money, but follow the ticket. Oops, I missed that. What's a bit about? Here's Jamie. Jamie, I have to say thank you to Jamie. I met Jamie for the first time last week. Last week? Last week. At a user group meeting. And it's the first time I've ever been to a user group meeting where someone has met me with alcohol. They gave you a... Jamie gave me a bottle of... I can't remember the name of it now. It's a Devonshire cider. It's very nice. Yeah, so... I haven't opened it yet, Jamie, but it's in my fridge at home. I shall have it over the weekend. But thank you for that, Jamie. Nice to meet you. Long time listener. Long time follower. At the pubcast. Yeah. Any other agile topics? I think we've done it before. We've nailed that one, smashed that one out of the park. You did say we might get more people from across the pond. Yeah. We've got nice people. It's almost like a community. It's almost like this thing's working. Get double figures, we've made it. I'm assuming people couldn't hear us okay given that people asking questions. It's quite noisy in here. Yeah, so we apologise for the background noise. It's more of a posh pub. It just feels like posh in here. Yeah, it's a gin palace, technically. Gin palace. They do lots of cocktails. Have you seen the show Stop a Cocktail? I saw Improvised Cocktails. It's under the bar. It's part of the show. You can ask them to improvise you a cocktail. So they'll give you that one. I've seen agreements the best way of recording what's been agreed. Oh, there's a question. The noise is part of the show. So the cocktail is quince gin, creme de fraise, that's the strawberry. And cream, lemon and fresh strawberry. That's the air cocktail, but you can improvise your own. Team agreement is best way of recording what's been agreed. Next level scrum master, technical master of coaching certification. Alright, so there's two different ones there. Team agreement is best way of recording what's been agreed. And should the scrum master's next level of focus should be around technical competence or coaching competence. I have a pretty strong feeling about the last one. Let's start with the first one then. Team agreement is best way of recording it. This is my phone, I can't show. We've got a poster as you come down the stairs at my house. As you come down the stairs from upstairs to downstairs. There's a bit of wall there. And we've got a poster on there that the four of us created. There's not five of us, but four of us created. My wife, me, my son and my daughter. Our team, our family values. Things that we believe we stand for and stand we believe in as a family. And we have fun, we are the good guys, we make mistakes, we apologise, those kinds of things. And I think you see quite a lot of those things around now. But that's something that we all see every day. Every time we go downstairs. You think you can remember them now? I can remember a lot of them, yeah. Yes, however you record them. Having them somewhere that you see them regularly. Just burns them into your conscience, if you like. Almost subliminally. I know, where was it? I can't remember what company it was now. But they had in the toilets, the company toilets, they had around the mirror. The sort of corporate values type thing. In terms of capturing them and displaying them, I think that's secondary to the actual formation of them. I think if they're done well, reinforced and well facilitated, I think they should be quite memorable. We were doing something today around team values. And one of the things that we pushed the group to do today was to really make them specific. So we started off with the conversation about, as a team, what do you believe in, what do you stand for, what kind of team do you want to be? And then we asked them to say, how would you know you're actually living those values or not? What are you actually prepared to commit to doing at a behavioural level to put those values into practice? And we asked them to create statements and say, we commit to XYZ. And the response was, that was a big thing for them. That was quite difficult for them to do, but quite powerful. Even if those commitments are relatively superficial, it's bringing it home that they actually have to do something. And the interesting thing is when you call people out on them, that's probably when they become more real. Because it's easy to write them down, say them once, and then never look at them again. But if they are specific enough that it's not easy to be broken, but you can identify them. Because you've done it on a different forum, but you've asked to be called. Remember, you did this, you asked, call me out when I do this. And I've given everyone permission to say, if I do this, call me out on it. And if it happens, then all of us and everyone goes, oh, we can't do it. Or in a team meeting, if people are using the laptops, and I'll say, can you turn the laptop off, please? It's like, that's all. That's the reminding people. That's actually something we agree to here. But then how that person reacts to it is key. If I've asked to be called out on not doing something or on doing something that I said I didn't want to do, and my response is defencing, or I sort of make an excuse for it, or I make the person who's called me out and it feels awkward or guilty, then it's less likely to happen again. So I really try and make the point of thanking that person, not only for going out of their way and doing what is probably uncomfortable for them, no one really likes doing that, but also for what it allows me to do to correct my behaviour and adopt a different behaviour. Then that's more likely to happen again. So, long way around, if you can make it visible, brilliant, if you can put it in a format that people take notice of, brilliant, but more importantly that, yeah, making it memorable. And the more specific and actionable, and just repetition, just almost daily assessing how are we doing with these things. And even if you have managed to do those behaviours or meet those commitments or live those values, just find one example of where you could have done it a little bit more. Because that then just makes it OK. It normalises the idea of imperfection and it normalises the idea of continuous improvement. Second question. Technical or coaching? I know where you stand on this. So I'll play devil's advocate on this then, because I know where you're going to come from. So I'll fight the corner here on technical. Let's debate this. So the value of a technical scrum master is they can be a advantage as an extra pair of technical eyes on a problem. They can give a perspective. They can maybe give a more systems thinking look at a problem and understand it from a technical standpoint. In Nokia certainly, when I would do it in Nokia, there was a kudos and a kind of a go-to person as a scrum master. Technically had an awareness of, so the production system went down, there was scrum masters that I worked with. Scrum masters that I worked with that would be able to nail well, it would be worried this, this, this, this or this. And those are the people that are attracted to problems because they generally would be able to discover something quite, you know, analysed, problem solved, fault checked quite quickly. That's an advantage. Having a more global view of the problem, rather than an individual would deal with it. Okay. I think if you offered me the choice, the opportunity to have technical knowledge, would I take it? I think we're biased, because we've never been technical. You have? Not technical enough. When you introduced me, you introduced this Java guru, Paul Goddard. But no, we've never been, I know some very good, very good scrum masters who were very technical and had a level of respect that I would never have got from their team because they could, they could talk on a level technically with their scrum masters. I'm really, I'm internally struggling with this. If I could push a button and I could give myself technical skills and knowledge, would I do it? But you're not interested by technical things? No, because I didn't do it. But I quite enjoyed it. When I did, so years and years ago, I went on the SQL server because of the visual, but I quite enjoyed it. You can write SQL statements by yourself. I did a few now and then. Select all from? Yeah. I did that. Select statements. That's about all I remember. But I quite enjoyed it. Select style. Select style. So my argument has always been I'd be too tempted or too blinded by what I know to be neutral, to be objective. And I think my naivety, my lack of knowledge, I consider that to be a help. But is that my cognitive bias kicking in and justifying my ignorance? I don't know. I'd really like to think that I could have that knowledge and still be neutral. But I know from other areas of my life that I struggle to be neutral when I do have some knowledge. So sports coaching, for example, I find it a lot harder to be neutral. And I default too quickly to pass on technical knowledge or whatever. Robin says technical knowledge can be useful if you know when you are wearing an SM hat. It's gone. Ah! Ah! It's gone. When you are wearing a technical hat, an SM hat, and when you are not ensuring that it's something you're wearing, it's certainly a leader. Yeah, true. I'd love to be able to do that, I think. I just don't trust myself enough. Maybe it's a physical hat you could wear. Yeah. To say, look, do you want me to, and ask the team the question, do you want me to answer this from a technical viewpoint or from a neutral stomach to viewpoint? This is good, but loads of comments, Geoff. Yeah, you can ask stupid questions about theory or favourite. That's what I believe, that you can actually be, obviously, ignorant. I'm not faking my lack of knowledge. No, I know. But I think, again, bringing back to Nokia as an example, if I was to summarise this as a facial expression, if I came across as stupid or naive, there'd be a... not everyone, but there'd be a kind of a... I'll do that better. So that kind of response that you're slowing us down, that type of thing. And... it lends itself back to what we were talking about today about our desire to solve solutions fast. So I think it does fuel that need an extra problem solver technically could solve a technical, complicated problem faster. A technical solution. Get more engineers around the problem because there is a solution. We just need an extra pair of hands to produce it. Yeah. And Toyota, they're... Yeah, very much so. Very much the technology. Chief engine. Chief engine. Yeah. I always had a problem with that. But they... I was the chief engine there with basically this from after all. Yeah. A technical... like a guru. Yeah. I think Ken Swabel was... because he was tongue-tied, he was a small talk, he kind of viewed that as not a bad thing. And Jeff Southerman views it as not a bad thing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I just think it's dangerous. I think more bad can come a bit, the more good can come a bit. Potentially. Potentially. There's a bigger downside than there is a bigger upside. Yeah. In my view. But... it's possible. Everything's possible. We've got about five minutes left. Any more questions? You can ask us anything. We didn't lose... AMA. Five minutes left. You could put it in. We'll use some might. Not bad now. I'll get some improviser though. What's in the box? About to see my first use group presentation and any tips. For topics or... presentation? Give us some more details, Robin. I know you're probably typing frequently. Is it a short lightning talk? Is it a long session? Presentation. Presentation. Um... What's got the topic? Talk slow. Be natural. That's it. That's easy to say, isn't it? Be natural. Be yourself. Most people tend to speed up when they're nervous. Slow down. It's presentations. 30 minutes on a board. So you know the topic? Yeah. So don't second guess yourself. I think the biggest mistake that people make is they assume that they're there to... the audience is there to trip you up. I think that's most people's concerns with these things. Um... Yeah. Go slower than you think you should. Enjoy it. Smile. Make a connection with people. No, I wouldn't say that. Well, I wouldn't say that. It's not appropriate. It's the vodka talking. It's not appropriate. It's a tip that I was given by an improv teacher years ago. I've told you about it. It's not appropriate right now. No, that's harsh, because there's an inject and you're deliberately assuming it. Now you've got to make something out of the tent if that's what it was all about. Use emotion. Use emotion. There's my tip. Yeah, so I'm a big fan of, at the moment, this big thing at the moment for me is positive affirmations. So, imagine, not necessarily imagine, but repeat all the things that are positive about what you're doing. So, tell yourself regularly that you know the topic. Yeah. Um... that people don't want you to fail. No. All the things that you can think of that are true and are also helpful, list them out and just repeat them to yourself regularly. Um... practice breathing. Obviously, practice what you want to say. Keep it simple. Don't overcomplicate it. It's good. Good luck, Robin. Where's the talk? It's like a really long satellite delay. It's like the Martian. Hello, Robin. Robin, come in. Nice coat. Well, it's in... Please, please. Please, you're a nice crowd. Yeah, yeah. They'll look after you, yeah. Home tent. Don't be afraid to say you don't know. No one's perfect. Be vulnerable. Be yourself. Be natural. Enjoy it. Yeah. Set yourself some realistic... Cheers, Corey. Set yourself some realistic success bar as well. Don't... Another mistake that a lot of people make is they... It's not a conscious thing, but they assume that their presentation has to be perfect. Their talk has to be perfect. If you sit... Nobody gives a perfect presentation. You watch some of the best presenters in the world. In fact, there was a really good, um... There was a really good video recently about some guy... It's going to be quite vague. But he was... Some guy who'd just been elected, I'm going to say, to Senator somewhere in America. And, um, he was doing his sort of acceptance speech, like, uh, thanks speech. And, uh, he's... One of his kids came on stage, that toddler. See this? And, uh, so his wife and his older kids were in the front row. And his little kid, all right, sort of wandering on with his blanket and stuff, wanders onto the stage, completely breaks the guy's flow. But he runs with it and makes a few jokes about it. And, uh, his wife's trying to say to the toddler, come on, come off the stage, come off the stage. And he just... And then he picks him up and starts talking about, you know, how family's really important and how you've got to look after the parents. Parents have a hard job and everyone laughs and has a joke about it. Get that up. It's quite good how you cope with the unexpected and cope with failure. Have a little, uh, just embrace the moment. A bit like the impromptu that you're talking about earlier on. That's what Richard Bryant said to me was, uh, the mistakes, the mistakes is the gold. That's where the real stuff is. When you make mistakes, that's where the magic happens. Look forward to the mistakes. Do it. Hard time to go. That's it, finish up. It's quite late.