 Hello everyone Today we are going to have something Really interesting like a journey from hell to paradise I am a software developer. I'm not a scrum master. I do Python. I love Python and I still love agile I implemented successfully few times in few different teams as crumb and Tried a little bit of Kanban and I would like to share my experience with you How many of you are using scrum or any agile technology at work? Rise a hand keep keep holding them if you like scrum or agile. Oh So many people almost but who hates you? Nice nice to meet you Just one person to be honest, I'm a bit surprised and And so first we will go to the hell Through me you pass into the city of whoa through me you pass into eternal pain through me among the people lost for I I'll hope abandon you who enter here This is the famous wording from Dante Alighieri from the divine comedy and today We are going to have the same journey as he had But together with our Virgilius scrum To the paradise Now we are starting our journey So what do we all want here? We would like to be more productive We would like to be helpful to all our projects and to our project managers to make them happy But also to be happier at work to be happy with our technologies So let's go through all the failures and challenges which we could meet on our way to paradise We would like to be more productive the question is how to do so Here comes the Manifesto for agile software development with the key points to satisfy customer Welcome changing requirements. We all love changing requirements. Of course. Why not? Let's change everything in the moment and Deliver frequently We all need agility in our projects. We want to be flexible and we want to be as fast as possible Sounds great. Yes, that's exactly what we are looking for here And if we would like to go for it, there are so many frameworks agile frameworks scrum Kanban extreme programming crystal dynamic Dynamic systems development method feature driven development and many more and when someone asks you How do you keep the project on the schedule? How do you deliver on time? Usually the answer is like, oh, we have agile and then the team or the team members they start discussing scrum And I'm just wondering is the agile and scrum the same is agile is is agile scrum or scrum is agile It's like the same if you would say that the object is the same as a class Do you agree? I Don't so the first first of all, I would like to tell you that agile is not a noun It's an objective It's like he's he's in the jail. He's very fast and flexible run as fast as you can So a gel is a set of principles and scrum is an agile framework and Nowadays to be honest a gel became a buzzword and every company would like to implement it Every everyone is keen to start with all the principles of any of the frameworks and to be successful in The company and they are really afraid to fail of not having them So let our journey begin together with our virgilio scrum. We are going to paradise We will continue our join a journey into success and let's imagine that our company decided to implement scrum for example, but what does it mean to me as a person to me To me as a team member Let's imagine That let's imagine that our company has a goal. They want to be productive. They want to be fast they want to deliver frequently and they all have different requirements changing every week or maybe every day and The meaning behind those words is usually whatever it takes and the problem is here Whatever it takes part because then it takes all our inspiration or our all our abilities to work Then all the teams are frustrated. They don't really know how to deal with it And this is the problem here comes the hell in the companies We would like to be happy at work we would like to apply it all the best practices and To be honest to have any kind of options Crafted for the teams, but that's not really possible because all the teams. They are different Every personality is different and also the projects even with the same topic for example two different companies But the same kind of product the processes may be different, of course So the possible solutions Here is like the most exciting one to have a scrum master It's very fancy buzzy and nice to have a dedicated scrum master for one team Who will set up all the sprints But there are multiple more options the first one is to have a team lead as a scrum master But hey, you know that there is no team lead role in the scrum There is the product owner the team and the scrum master and where is the team lead in this case? The team lead is becoming not a real scrum master This person is more like a controller For the management to control if the project is on time is everything is on schedule if everything is delivered and it's kind of Not the nice way to set up a scrum because then team is not really happy with the scrum Everyone is not energetic and not willing to report to the same team lead because it's not a facilitator It's just a person who has even more control The second option is to have a dedicated scrum master, which is nice. It's always nice the third one to hire One person or maybe a group of people maybe a separate company to train the team to be Agile or scrum to deliver on time to know which meetings do they need to set up like To get a bit of a feeling how should it work and there are even nice trainings I had that for the company but the problem afterwards that the team should set up it and Then the company who is running all the workshops They're leaving the company in the same state as they were With some kind of knowledge and then they need to implement a new framework. It's the same as development You are reading a book and then you have to try it, but does it really work all the time? And then the other option is to have one scrum master for few different teams And there are so many open questions in Those four different options For example, do we really need a full-time scrum master? Is it a full-time job? because the company would probably think that The scrum master will have not enough work to do it's like 50 50 and maybe it's an option to share One scrum master between different teams. Why not? Yeah for sure that might work But if one scrum master shares different teams and one team has impediments They cannot really deliver on time because they don't have enough resources or maybe they don't have enough communications with the customer and The other team has some issues with the scrum or they just cannot work together They have arguments and they needed a solution What to do how scrum master will decide which team is more important how to do so? It's kind of impossible then one team will succeed and then the second one will fail and Who will be responsible for that manager or a team? Of course the team and For the scrum training the question here is if one person is going to be a scrum master or they will share responsibilities then At the very beginning as a full-time job. I tried it. I was a developer. I entered the new team. Everyone was very Frustrated with the job. They didn't talk with each other and then I tried to bring them together with some Team buildings and also explain them all the principles how it works and what can they do with the scrum Which meetings can we have and how can we be happy and successful and It really took a lot of time to adjust for the team and to bring a safe environment for the team So then they will open up and be able to speak up during the meetings Do you agree that the scrum is about things developers do when they are not writing code? Anyone that's nice Maybe you have perfect scrum or agile principles in your companies I heard that a lot from all the developers and They are not really happy because they have to do even more work at work. They have to write the code They have to attend meetings and also they have to fill all the forms for the Sometimes for the daily you have to really fill the form. What did you do yesterday and so on and that's kind of time-consuming So that is the hell of agility principles, but sometimes after the hell you can see a hope For example like this that was our fastest stand-up ever only 59 minutes less than an hour great job Seriously, I have something like that and it was yeah, it was super exciting, right? So how to start? there is a hope and Dave Thomas one of the creators of Agile methodology gave us a hope he crafted a way how to start with all the agile Principles and how to implement that first search for a solution pick one most fitting one But just one then try it out and Then review the results just stop for a moment look back and then decide if it works or not Then adjust and start over again and Here the most important part is to try just one solution at a time because if you will try multiple ones Then you will not see what is working and what is not it may not work And then you still need to adjust again again and it depends on the teams sometimes all the improvements They just simply work sometimes nothing works and you need to Go outside of the box and see what is happening So implementing a gel principles is not a goal The goal is to be more productive and to be happier at work But that's not the goal of the company company wants to have more deliveries and Better products for sure but for people and for the scrum master The goal is to make the team so comfortable that they can share ideas They can speak up and they can craft a solution together So the scrum master is more like a full-time job at the beginning But then afterwards the team is self-organized and it should just simply work together They're finding the solutions together without a scrum master So if the company would go for the scrum Then they would have all those meetings that they list and up the sprint review the demo the retrospective and the sprint planning and many more So the daily stand up it should be less than 15 minutes Everyone should be standing to be as uncomfortable as possible So to finish earlier than 59 minutes and then answer three questions and the three questions are usually Always what I did yesterday. What am I going to do today and which impediments I had and usually the answer is For the first one for developers. Yeah, I did some coding yesterday. Yeah, I'm going to do some coding today and from impediments I had a meeting which prevented me from writing even more code yesterday So usually it's the same every day. Isn't it boring, right? So how to change it? There is a way because boring stuff prevents us from working and from inspiration And if you are trying out the new technology and then you have to sit at the meeting for an hour Or even worse for two hours, then you don't want to work anymore So how to make it fun There are multiple solutions first Change the location if you're standing up at the same place where you work every day Just go for a coffee. Why not meet up at the kitchen or maybe while walking to take a coffee Just do the stand up answer the questions or talk with each other sometimes changing the question helps because if you will answer the questions what inspired me yesterday and What am I going to do today to bring up the energy into my product? That's a bit different or maybe you can answer those questions for a colleague of yours You can just switch the order and then you share kind of understanding what everyone does in your team Or even visualizing the product the progress helps and the way Which you would like to have for example You can set up some kind of local currency you earn like 100 points and then you got a coin For the team and then the team member who got more coins can do some kind of review or something like that also making notes and making it visual helps a lot and Changing the order you can for example bring the big bowl and then throw to the person and say like you are the next one That works So the sprint retrospective Nothing funny here. It's just reviewing the processes. It's not about the product just about the team You're sitting there listening each other sleeping. No, actually, it's not it could be even funny When the whole team interacts with each other for example, what I did in the team it was like the timeline and Every team member was able to use either green or red or the orange sticky notes The green is like everything good happened and they would like to have it more the red something bad happened And the orange is like oh, I don't really know it's something in the middle And then if you will put it on the timeline Then you will see how the product how the product was developed and how the processes went For example from the green to the red at some point and then to the green or orange And you really can see the progress at the very beginning. It was some kind of very Funny because everyone would like to have more team buildings more beers more coffee It's like green and then from the red We didn't have chocolate for example yesterday. Yeah, it was kind of Fred. We fixed that until the next spring because Somebody from the team brought a chocolate and it was improvement, of course, so it worked and to make in your retrospectives even more fun retrospective Could have sort of a name as Result of the work you did how it went It could have a story for example like this if in our Sprint we were throwing out the stories. We were losing money and like just Doing that and the name was Wolf of the Wall Street and Here's the paradise almost so close. We are almost there But there is one but The overall knowledge About our scrum The orange one is something that we don't know The dark blue is something that we know about scrum and the biggest part is something that we don't know that we don't know But we don't really know it that we don't really know it It's a hard question how to discover this part. It's a huge part And we don't even know what to do because we don't really know what what it's happening in there and I would recommend one book about Playing games at work is about it's about developing the products And Playing at work. It's not just about scrum or a gel or any methodology. It's about methods how to Sex up your the products and how to deliver based on the customer Because customer usually doesn't really know what what they want They are frustrated. Sometimes they really know like we need these but Sometimes They like oh we want this product No matter what and how we just need it and with those games you can discover what you don't know about the product and about the customer and One more thing to say sometimes on the way to paradise we meet zombies Why are we talking about zombies and scrum? That's kind of weird They appear to be human but in reality they are not there is no beating heart and the same Is in scrum there is a zombie scrum approach It appears to be scrum But in reality there is no fun in it. There is no beating heart. I would highly recommend you to go to the link Let me show it to you to this one They will suggest you how to discover if your scrum is a zombie scrum and how to fix it It's zombie scrum Resistance and I would like to say from a small spark great flame had risen And I wish you all to all your projects and to all your teams a Small spark and inspiration and fun. Thank you Thanks a lot Anastasia. I Found myself and how I work in the in my team in many things you talk about I'm happy. I'm a guy And do you have question? Hi I have a question regarding External influences so you want to improve your processes may bring in more automation more CICD But always the product owners or some senior business people. They always want more products, right and They generally don't give you enough time to work on your technical debt and things like those we have Experiences with that and how do you influence those guys who are outside the team? I can see two questions the first one about the processes how to change them within the company and the second how to Deliver on time still was the change in processes I Got the question and the concern of yours and the answer is sometimes you have to Tell them how much will they get? instead of just delivering the Products all the time because if they will see at least one improvement within a week or two weeks Then they would believe you So what we did we asked for some extra time for one sprint and then we started Then we showed like hey we committed for this and we delivered that let's try one more sprint and in two sprints in it improved a lot and they really could see the progress or Sometimes you can really lie for some For some big companies when they are not flexible at all So for example you have a scrum for the whole company and it's not flexible You have to follow all the rules and it's kind of hard and easy. It's easy because you can Be one separated team and just don't show all the processes in your team. You can kind of fly Yeah, we are following but you're not and afterwards when the scrum master or somebody from the team is Showing the progress then they're very happy and surprised Another question. I think like sometimes with stand-ups when a manager is present You sort of say things different to when he's not present because you may be like oh, yeah I did this yesterday. I did this yesterday. I did this yesterday When he's not there, you don't care about giving so much detail Do you think there's some value in having different people at standards on each day or not? Different people in different people is in I'd say like with your manager and without your manager I mean you still have the same team. You cannot change team members. I mean you can do. Yeah, that's possible What we did in the current company I recently started and it was kind of a challenge for me to find the company where There are already kind of principles implemented So I would be still happy joining them and not changing them completely as I did before So what they do they invited more people because it's a startup and we have More than 10 people is like 20 people standing around and we still manage to finish in 15 minutes We usually answer those questions, but it's more like playing around and having fun one of the other But the thing is we didn't we did wanted to have a change of opinions and be on the same track every day So it's still possible. You can invite more people. You can un-invite them If you don't like them. Oh just don't come. Yes or change the location and they will not see the changing thanks for your talk What is the difference between a scrum master and just a middle manager and the manager and a middle manager? Yes, there's somebody who is sort of above the team and is responsible for higher levels of management. I Mean they do management and the scrum master doesn't scrum master is responsible for the team's happiness so it's kind of facilitator between the teams and The manager should trust the team and the team Shouldn't be controlled to be honest because it's self-organized team and they can manage whatever they have except impediments which are there to be a result by the scrum master and the scrum master could go to the management and ask for resolutions But usually yeah, they do everything Kind of so the scrum master has to protect the team from the management Good question. Thank you question We are time for another couple of questions if you have So thanks a lot again Anastasia and See you soon in Berlin