 One from each table can come and pick up a paper, a sketch plan and a poster. Can this team split into two teams? Too many people. Excellent. So, let's start. So, congratulations. You are the Strum Master of our startup and we are going to do something that is going to be exciting, right? So let me, let me start with this. Can you hear the word startup? What comes to your mind? Like what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Chaos then? Excitement. Sorry? Excitement. Excitement. Challenges. Anything else? Opportunities. Superteams. Superteams. Yes. So, you are going to have all of them, okay? You are going to have all of them and so we are going to play, okay? And what are we going to play a game, a role or a movie? What are we going to play? Play a movie? Some other day. But what are we going to play? Guesses. Guesses. Role. Role. You are going to play a role? Of course. Of course. That is, that is a given thing, okay? And the Scrum Master belongs to a startup company, right? And this startup company has some other Scrum Masters also, which means that this Scrum Master is just for one team, okay? And this guy is newly appointed or you are newly appointed right now, okay? So when we say that we are going to play Scrum Master, it feels like this, right? You are going to become a superhero and all stuff. But what it actually looks like in the context of a startup is this, right? You have to play, you have to wear multiple hats at multiple times, okay? You have to be somebody for some time and the next instant you have to be some other person because there aren't enough people, right? So how are we going to wear multiple hats and how are we going to even tackle with a single work day? That is what we are going to look at in this session, right? All set? Nice. And this is not going to be like, I am the expert, I say so, you follow, not that, okay? We are all experts, okay? I will assume that. You will come to know why soon. We are all experts and we are going to learn from ourselves, okay? So now, I told you that there are multiple Scrum Masters and there are multiple people, right? And now, see how many Scrum Masters are there, more than 20 people are here. And are you all going to think the same way? No, everybody thinks in their own way, right? Let me give you an example. There were two monks fighting on a road, okay? They just came out of a class by their, say, a teacher monk, okay? And they were fighting over whose interpretations of the teaching were right. This was the fight. So among the fighting monks, one monk was like a guy of older age, and the second guy was a little younger. And the third monk happened to pass by, and this monk was of middle age. How many monks are we talking about now? A monk who is older, a monk who is younger, and a monk who is middle-aged. And this middle-aged monk was so sorry seeing the plight of these two monks fighting with each other. So what he told, okay, let me take you to the teacher monk, and let us resolve this fight about whose interpretation is right. And this middle-aged monk took all these two monks into the teacher's room and explained the situation, okay? Whose opinion do you want to hear first? The teacher monk said, old monk first, old monk first, okay? And old monk started. He said A, B, C, everything, and then the teacher monk says, yes, you're right. You're right in saying this. Your interpretations are right. And then this old monk was very happy, jubilant, A minus right, you lose, I, and he went out of the room. And then this engaged monk was like devastated, oh my God, fine, I lost the fight. Let me at least make a try. He went to the teacher and told his interpretation. He calmly listened, and then the teacher told, you are right too, then. This guy also was like happy because he was angry, and he got an appreciation. This guy also went, now who is in trouble? The guy who took these two people into the teacher, and this guy is asking teacher what are you doing? Like this guy told something, this guy tells the exact opposite thing, and they were fighting and you say both are right. And the teacher monk explained, you are right too, right? So this is the real world, let's face it. Everybody has their own interpretations, and they have their own context in which they see the world. And we have to respect the context because you are not in that context, right? So this is all about reading other people's brains, and what if you could pass along your brains to other people? How nice it would be? How many times have you said, oh man, this guy doesn't understand me. How excellent it would be if I could just take my brain and fit it into his dumb head, right? So we are going to do that, but not exactly, not literally, but figuratively. So how are we going to do that? So this white sheet of paper in each of the desks is the brain, okay? That is the brain, and that is going to contain what you think, okay? So this one hour, next one hour is going to be a series of situations, four or five situations maximum, where there is something happening and you are an observer and you have to respond to that situation, right? And once the question is, ball is being passed to your court, okay? You take the decision, you are supposed to write in that sheet of paper in this format. This is my response, this is what I would do, do it individually, not as a team, okay? Everybody, so write it in a sticky note and paste it, okay? This is what I would respond, this is how I would respond and also there is a big situation going on, right? There is a story which will be developed, and you should look at the story and see what are the things that are positive in this story. Do some Sherlock Holmes thing, okay? What are the positive things that I'm observing here? And of course, what are the negative things that I'm observing here? So this A is nothing but what are the positive things you observe in that situation, and oops, is the negative things that you observe in the situation. And if possible, you could even write down what you would do, to turn what the oops into A. Do you want me to repeat these rules? Yes, I will play out a series of situations. Every situation will contain two, three slides. And after seeing the situation, a question will be put to you and you have to take a decision. And you should record your decision in a sticky note on the paper. Everybody should do individually, okay? And then A is nothing but this places for any positive observations, anything that give happiness to you that something good is happening. And oops, is something that is very bad. Got it? Shall we proceed to the first situation? Okay, the first situation is this. You are going to enter into the very first sprint planning of the startup company, the very first, okay? And you have some team members and the product owner and you are just going to enter the room where sprint planning is about to happen. And any people who don't have a sheet and sticky notes and a pen, they can come and take it. So this is how it looks, okay? You have a product owner, the guy with the French beard, and that guy asks you, not asks you, ask the team in general. Let them settle down, I'll talk later. The owner comes straight on the face of the team and asks this question, guys, off the record. How many features are we going to finish this sprint? Before sprint planning, he asked this question to you. And one of your teammates, these two people are actually your teammates, okay? Please pay close attention to this. You might find some AA factors and some oops factors in these situations, okay? And one of the teammate response. Let us not have huge expectations. Why not start with the same as last two weeks? Five features? One of your teammates says this, okay? And then another teammate response. Yeah, I read somewhere that most teams set extremely hard goals in the first sprint and then they fail. They realize their potential only later. But I don't want to fail in the first sprint. Let us not do the same mistake. Let us keep only five features, got it? These two people are thinking that we should not commit more. And then they ask you, what do you think? Okay, now the ball is in your court and you can basically take any of these answers. Option one, let's aim for more than five features. And option two, you guys are correct. Let us not aim as high as five features. And option three, I don't want to comment on this now. Maybe later. You just take, you write it on the sheet with your sticky notes, this response, whatever response should come in the first column. And since you have observed this entire dialogue, which happened between multiple people, see whatever you see as a super awesome concepts in the second column. And in the third column, write something which you feel is negative. This is not good. This should not happen. You have two minutes. It should be done on an Indian comment to play later. I'll tell you when. Yeah. It will be four minutes. It will be four minutes. Okay, see, your sheet basically should look at one thing which is the second column should have things which are positive, what you perceive as positive in this entire situation. And oops is some things which you perceive as negative in these situations. So I'm just replaying. This is where it starts. Tell me when you have to move. That is the intention. It's happening here. There are some faults here. There are some good things hidden in these pictures. Am I hiding? Most people are done. So here is how we are going to transfer our brains to other people. Guess how? Transfer this sheet to the next team. And it has to come in a circle or whatever way works. Just transfer it some order so that this can continue forever. You can give it to them. Sorry? Nothing is needed. It's all random. Don't worry. You don't own that brain anymore. Just take a minute to look at each of the responses. And each team should come up with one very non-obvious response for plus and minus. Anything that you find to be very non-obvious, but that is there written by some other team. Or anything that you would least expect. You order them in the order of obviousness. And least obvious is what we need to talk about. You have one minute to decide that. Each team has to tell that. Let's hear from this team. What is the most non-obvious plus you observed? Nothing. Non-obvious minus? One second. To your point, that was what I had. Non-obvious minuses? Non-obvious minuses, they're saying since this is the first sprint, we don't know exactly what the velocity is, but we were not much in agreement in terms of they said that past two sprints, it was five point C. No historical data. This was one point that we had in terms of, we didn't see them actually analyzing it in terms of high priorities to release. No scientific analysis, just a word of mouth. Exactly, it just features. So the non-obvious minus was that there is no historical data, there is no scientific analysis, there is no velocity calculation, it's just a word of mouth. From your team? Anything that is non-obvious? So one of the non-obvious which we felt was like Scrum Master asking for how much stories we didn't actually get that word. OK, Scrum Master did not ask it was the product owner. That was one. And off the record, there is something mentioned on off the record. Off the record. What is off the record? Off the record is something like it's just between me and you, and no one else will know about this thing. OK, that is called off the record. Guys, off the record. News reporters come and say, off the record, do you want to give some comment? And the newspaper will publish the next day, say. Our sources said, OK, that is what is off the record. Anything, any non-obvious positives? Yes, over to the next team. Hari, Hari, Hari, Hari, Hari. Everything seems pretty obvious. OK, nothing non-obvious. Everything plain vanilla. OK, from this team. Positive non-obvious was team thinking about next print in advance. Sorry? Team thinking about next print in advance. OK, that is non-obvious. OK, they call that teams, the fact that team is thinking about the next print in advance is non-obvious. OK, that is a plus or minus? That's a plus. OK. What we are thinking is all the three options which we are, he's asking, he should not be asking all the three options to the team in the first place itself. That itself isn't non-obvious. He's not asking the team. You are the scrum master. You have to choose one among these three options. Yeah, you are the scrum master. You have to choose. I shouldn't give the option at all in the first place because why scrum master is giving the option? Scrum master is not giving the option. You are the scrum master. And you have to choose one of those options. Do you find that you are the scrum master? You can tell any of these three options. You can tell any of these three what you call sentences as the end of the conversation. We are planning to have this option too. So you guys are correct because the team is decided based on their previous experiences. So let's go with the aim of as high as the point. The response itself is non-obvious here. Okay, from your team? Yeah, I think one of the positives that was mentioned is PO asking for team opinion on delivery. So didn't understand how that's a positive. And another thing is there was a mention about this would help to release the pressure. So I don't know whether, what kind of pressure they haven't still started. Probably they came, they come from the school where PO doesn't even ask for team's opinion before commenting the user stories for delivery. So that is a positive point that at least PO thinks that team has to see in it. That is a positive point. But the PO should never ask. Yeah, yeah, that is fine, that is fine. So what we are, see, I'll explain you what we are exactly doing here. We are trying to examine different schools of thoughts because not everybody comes from the same school of thought. Okay, and by doing this brain exchange thing we are able to understand what other person thinks. See now this team did not write that response but this team has to comprehend that response and somehow some people with actual sensibility wrote it. Which means that it is true in some context. That is what we are looking at. Got me? Yeah. Any non-obvious minuses? Okay. So we basically came up with a lot of pluses and minuses regarding the situation. And what do you think is the ideal option? Option three is the ideal option because nothing is known until now. What is the size of the story? How much hearts it will take? Nothing is known until now. So size of the story is not known and option three is the ideal option but depending on context varies, right? And time has, brain has already traveled, okay? Now, situation two. Now we are off that lobby and actually get into the sprint planning room where the sprint planning is actually happening, okay? So you enter the sprint planning room and you see two of your teammates standing like this. Okay, two of your teammates are standing like this. There is a blackboard and there is some stuff written on the blackboard. So what is written? I'll spell it out. It says sprint planning at the right end, okay? In some different colored check piece and then sprint start date, first main, sprint end date, 15th main. And then an employee says, we thought of saving some of our time. So we came here yesterday and wrote down some known details to start with. How does this look? Thank you. Okay, so this is what you are seeing, okay? So go through the same exercise. What doesn't look right? What doesn't look wrong? Now we are increasing in the level of complexity, right? First one was less complexity. This is increasing in level of complexity and you go and then say, okay, these all looks good and now we will also write number of days available also, okay? As a third data point, okay? That is what planning is for, right? First, you should know how many days are there. And then say May 1st to May 15th and this guy writes 15, pretty straightforward, right? Okay, now there are two parts to this situation. First is a SORNO question. You can answer that and keep it to yourself and after the second question is over, you can go ahead and commit it in all papers, okay? The first question is, does this even look correct? 30 seconds to respond. Keep the answers to yourself, think. Has anybody not made up his mind so far so that we can proceed? Everybody has made up their minds, right? Okay, now coming to the second part, answer is okay, right? We find that this is a work day only calendar which means that you don't have 15 days, but 10 days out of which one day is a holiday where you end up with nine days instead of the planned 15 days, right? So now the actual question is, what do you think the difference between this 15 and nine years? What are the things that can happen? Okay, start writing. There can be multiple responses to the question. What do you think is the actual difference between in real world? 15 and nine. Yeah? Yes. Assume that they made all, anything you assume, you can assume anything. That's fine, you set your own context. So what is the actual difference between the 15 and nine here? So after that response, your observations, positive observations about the scenario of the situation and negative observations about the situation. There can be multiple responses, you can just start writing. Whatever comes to your mind, that's fine. You don't have to appear intelligent because nobody is going to know who wrote it, right? Everything is anonymous. Do you need a sheet of paper? Guys who do not belong to a team can join some team or they can at least sit with some team so that they can feel that they are a part of the play. This question is a little difficult, right? Compared to the last question. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah, assume that we all agree that it doesn't look good because we already found out that the no is the answer. So let us say that we chose no and the actual question is what is the difference between that nine and 15? Why do you think the difference between nine and 15 matters? Where all it can impact? The moment more than 15 people appear bored, I would assume that this exercise is over and I will pass on to the next. So do we have response, positive and negative? Do we? Let the brains fly. You know how they fly, right? Don't get back your own sheet again, please. You should get a sheet which you have not seen before. You know what I'm going to ask you next? Be ready with the answers. Non-obvious answers, anything. Sorry? That's fine, that's fine. Whatever is there you can take. Everyone looks so busy. It is mentioned as to sprint duration of two weeks is perfect. Okay. So that is non-obvious positive. Okay. And a negative it is mentioned as work started with only few team members. Team thinks about we can work very quickly. Okay. Team thinks about we can work very quickly. Who wants to go next? Yeah. Okay, so on the response we found anything can happen. Okay. That's non-obvious. See that's so philosophical. Anything can happen. That is really unobvious. Nice. To us. The other non-obvious was you got to go. Okay. So, you know, I don't find anything here in that. You got to, as I said that, you got to jump into the wrong thing. It's non-obvious. And here non-obvious I don't find anything. Wrong institution, number of days. Yeah, jumping to conclusions. Yeah. Okay. Yep. And conclusion and anything can happen. That's nice. You want to go? We will not be able to meet the timeline. Okay. That's it. That is on the response. Okay. Okay. They don't find any positive and negative. That's fine. Who wants to go next? Okay. I guess they're written here. Sprint planning should start on the day one, not on the previous day. Yes. Scandalous. Right? Okay. Anything else you have? Non-obvious stuff? Thinking to be improved. Thinking capacity to be improved. Okay. I don't know how can you meet. Okay, okay. You want to go? One of the negative things, waste of time in putting down unnecessary details. Okay. I hope that doesn't refer to me. Anyone else left out that theme hasn't. Okay. And it's in the UPS also. Impact release plan. Okay. So that was non-obvious. You cannot have. Yeah. And the other one was, they already decided that they were going to miss the Sprint goal. So that was. Yeah. So if you take a deeper look at the situation, what does this actually relate to? This is a startup where people are just starting to form their work style. And a single miss in this could actually shift the proposed organization culture. Culture hasn't. Whether the teams are okay with working in the weekends or not, or yes. The answer may be anything, but this has a possible impact on the organization culture. It's just a simple question. Okay. Typically, yes or no question. But whatever you say could influence other teams. For example, for my team, I say yes. Okay. 15 days looks good. And the other teams will get the pressure saying, okay, this team is working for 15 days. Why not you two? Then what will happen? The entire organization will start to slog. Yeah. In the first place. They don't even know what the user story is. Just even though they are starting initiation or this is the first process they're applying to follow, the scrum master who or is the responsible person has to bring everybody into the same page. Exactly. So that they should talk the same language. Yes. That is how we address the Ops. They only have these Ops responses, yay, it will work out. Otherwise, everybody gives their own answers. Yeah. Which there is no connection. So that is how we address that Ops. You have to basically educate people to bring them on the same page. They have to talk the same language that you talk. That is how we address this Ops, right? Shall we shift to the next one? Situation three. And this is not a cartoon, okay? And you're going to be actually sneaking and looking at email of other people. Okay? So you got an email from the big boss of the company. We'll see who or the founder or whoever it is, okay? And it looks like this. If you can't read this, you can probably come forward and read or you can ask me to read it out as well. Yeah. So bi-monthly release cycles regarding, this is a subject. And from the big boss at mycompany.com to all scrum masters at mycompany.com and received an hour ago, okay? High scrum masters. We are thinking of setting an expectation of one release every two months. We are thinking of setting an expectation of one release every two months. I am planning to send a communication to all concerned people regarding this decision. I hope we are fine with releasing a new version second Monday of every alternate month, which means that once in two months release is going to happen. And they are actually fixing on when the release is going to happen also in these two months, okay? This month, second Monday, it happened, which means that next month it will not happen. And the very next month, second Monday, it will again happen. And it goes on like that. Does everybody get this point? You want me to repeat? No, fine. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let us put our observations on the brains, okay? Please let me know your thoughts. Thank you, regards to the big boss, okay? If you want me to, I can go over this email one more time and then go to the options. You are supposed to respond to this email. Okay, how are you going to respond? Let me go over the options. First option, that's awesome. Now we do not have to run around the office asking for the proposed next release date, right? Startup happens. You don't know when it is going to release, right? People have to run around the office, that happens. That's scary, right? So this guy is happy that it's awesome. That doesn't happen anymore. And the second, our product velocity is not so high. Can we release one in every quarter instead? Okay, this is another viewpoint. And the third possible option could be, bi-monthly release sounds good. But just a thought, can we make it second, third stay instead of second Monday? Or if necessary, first Thursday. Put it on your paper. You're not having your same brains anymore, right? You exchanged it, or didn't we? Exchanged it, right, yeah. Do you want me to display the first email? That came from the big boss? Options, this is the option. These are the options. And again, the same format. Response, which option you are picking, and anything positive that you observe, and anything negative that you observe. Put your individual responses. Put your, you have to respond. No, these are the three options. I'll tell you why at the end of this. I'll tell you why, yeah. So I'm going to the original email. Ask, wrong, sneaky, or bad, write it in the oops section. Somebody call me? Let's finish this within 30 seconds from now. Switch, put it on it. We'll do it later, keep it. One more minute? This is non-obvious. You should switch on the mic, perhaps. Option C, eat, what is this? There is no concern that we'll have to work over the weekends. Okay. Because the release date is on Thursday and weekends are spared. Okay, one more, the other part of this, what is this, oops. Scrum Master has not checked emails for an hour. Awesome. Who wants to go next? So the two concerns were that if you work on third, if the release date is on Thursdays, people might not work over the weekends. But if it is on Monday, people are gonna work in the weekends. That might be the teams, what do you call it? They are planning or cultural execution. It can differ from team to team. Who wants to go next? Nobody. Forced nomination. Option, in response, option A. That is, I don't know how it's awesome without any planning, without anything, just because Big Boss is saying and adhering to it. And in this, in positives, they have a vision for release, vision of a release. This is not a, this is a disaster. Okay. Without any type of planning, anything, we just fix a date and then just take whatever is available. Okay. Would be a disaster in production. Okay. Nothing in negative, right? Negative, they're mentioning that capacity and velocity seem to be decided by the teams and it should not be done by the Big Boss. So they put that as a negative. It's fairly non-obvious, so I'll mention it. Okay. Who wants next? Okay. In the AI part, it's said that the scope is very flexible. Sorry? The scope is very flexible. Okay, the scope is very flexible. That's good. Okay. This thing, who's part is that? If we are not, if we are not changing in the middle of the risk, then it's good. If we are not. Changing the schedule in the middle of the release. Okay, these people might be changing the schedule in the middle of the release. Which means that initial hiccups will happen. That is a whoops part. I would say that for a non-obvious response, there were five responses and four out of five were A. Okay. So they were very excited about what the Big Boss had planned. That was pretty surprising. And then for a yay, they said they will release whatever we complete. So it seemed not very goal oriented for the team for a startup. Whatever happens, happens. Anyway, we are going to release. Okay. This team. Done. I don't pay attention at all, do I? See. Okay, I think this team responded in all the way. They decided to put five checks in each. Okay. Okay. So the whoops case is what are we trying to release or how? They really don't know what to release and what to know. How to. You talk about dates, but tell me what to release, Baba. That is a annoying thing. Okay. That's the good one here. Okay. And the other one here is the good thing is the asking for the team members input. Though he's already decided, he's just trying to buy the inputs from the team members also. So they're also aligned with his ideas. The big boss goes for a buy-in rather than command and control. Correct. He did that one, but still he want to make them to align. Yeah, he's ready to hear the concerns. Yeah. Okay. You guys haven't done it, right? There is nothing written much. Nothing. Nothing much. Okay. Fine. So let's go to the next one. Shelby. Okay, next one is, we have changed. Yeah, that's fine. So now, this situation four is the curious case, 230. Yeah, we have time. Yep. Thanks for doing that. The curious case of a code review, not Z. Do you have somebody like that in your office? Code review, not Z. Not Z is a person who is so authoritative and ruthless when it comes to code review. Right? And in this case of current situation, you are that guy. So you write an email, okay, assume that you did, okay. Saying this, code review, let's make it mandatory, okay. From myself that you wrote that email to all scrummasters at mycompany.com, sent just now. Hi guys. I see that a lot of code is pushed to release without being reviewed. Can we set up a code review system to make code reviews mandatory? No matter what. I would like to request your inputs on this. Thank you. Write it when it comes to you, right? This is not the boss. This is you. You wrote this email. You were so infuriated that code gets pushed to production without review, right? And then what happens is, one of your colleagues pings you on IM. He's the other scrummaster who received this email, okay, he says, hey, just now saw your email regarding mandatory code review. Nice idea, man, okay. And then you respond. Yeah, we need to be strict on mandatory code reviews. And then he responds. True, but one question. Should architects be blocked by code review? Aren't they here because the company trusts their decision? Developer, it is okay. But architect, does their code also should get reviewed? And then you say, give me a minute to think, man. Okay, and these are your options. Option one, no, architects don't get a bypass code review. Option two, I don't think we guys can take that call. Management has to answer that question. Option three, we can actually give exception to architect since they are trustworthy and that is how they became architects. Go ahead. Hurry up, we have just five minutes and I will conclude with the last situation. So let's hurry up on this one. What are the examples, please? The entire session, what's the session useful is a question. Write your response, oops, and A, and you can leave if you wish to. And what we can do is all these sheets can be put on display in different walls so that everybody can go and take a look at it about what other people actually wrote for each question. Okay, and I'm going to share the same presentation PPT in the convention or it'll come to your agile India 2015 website so that you can refer to what people told. It's advisable to take some pictures so that you can go back and refer to what people actually think, what kind of planet people come from. That is what this exercise is all about. So one of you can please take it and place the sheets on the wall. And I think we are done. We don't have any more time. Sorry about that, yeah? That's it, that's it. The fifth situation is this classroom. Okay, is this session useful or not? Respond and then put your thoughts on that sheet which is lying there at the exit. I am done and thank you very much.