 Good afternoon. Welcome. For the next 45 minutes, we're going to be exploring what happens if we try something crazy. What happens if we try scaling down? Because if individuals and interactions are more important than tools and processes, then the question becomes, are there practices that individuals can do as an expression of our mindset grounded in our frameworks that can help improve our interactions? So I'm going to put a quick journaling exercise up on the screen. I invite you to try. These are two questions. I have pens. I can toss if anybody needs something to write with. This is for you. We're going to write these down, give you one minute, and go. Need a pen? Anybody else? Good. You're going to need it again in a little bit. Not a demonstration of my throwing skills, for sure. OK. So that was a form of retrospective, scrum of one style. How did it feel? I want you to know that the material we're going to share is based on experience, lived experience, and it's a work in progress. It's a set of practices that are suggestions, an attempt to remember and to embody some core fundamentals through a bit of repurposing and playing with scale. I happen to know a group of people, and some of you in this room might belong to this group. I know for a fact there's at least one, who tend to function as a cross-functional team inside of one headspace. And that's professional artists. Do we know the book Artful Making? What managers need to know about how artists work? The author, Lee Devon, sends his love. I spoke with him last night. His message was directed towards managers. And as we've heard through some of the sessions earlier today, and as we know, in the past decade, since the book was published in 2003, the whole ground of management is shifting under our feet. There's this whole flattening, this self-organizing poll happening in organizations. And so there's not just one single class of knowledge workers that needs to be concerned with management issues anymore. It's a matter of personal responsibility, leadership. So returning to the subject of artful making and looking at how artists work can be about self-management and personal responsibility and leadership. So we're in the space between art and business. And I have to say, I really appreciate the Agile India Conference placing such a value on the arts because it is a powerful thing. I've dedicated myself to helping artists get resources because I believe that their creativity and their diversity help make the world safer for everyone. And isn't that what we want? Isn't that kind of the gist of Agile culture and a nutshell, safety and innovation? So here's another exercise, a backlog if you will. I'd like you to write down, invite you to write down these three things I like, I wish or I need, and I wonder. I have another pen. Underhand, that's worked a lot better. So this one will be two minutes. I have to thank Ashkay Fathari for his framework for constructive feedback. I like, I wish, I wonder. I use it a lot. Right now in the present moment focusing, the I wish I need could refer to a future state. But that's right. Not to overthink, just a source of inspiration. So I help artists become lean entrepreneurs and do that through a project storefronts program in New Haven, Connecticut and a few other venues. But I believe they already are. In fact, artists can be considered the world's indigenous lean entrepreneurs because there's a constant integration between creative goals and business goals. There's the ability to do a lot with very, very little to leverage resources. I would even say that artists have the ability to make something from nothing. They're into failing fast, failing hard, failing frequently, seeing what works, inspecting the results, and relying on feedback, but being very selective about where that feedback comes from, finding the right sources of feedback. And all of this lean thinking fuels an incredible trust in the emergent outcome. It's the ability to face the walls of the dance studio, the blank page, the operating budget, and approach those things as a container, knowing that they will be filled in with the right thing. It's that deep level trust in emergence itself, trusting the process that I find inspiring in artists. And we're all navigating the risky, uncertain territory between the possibility of someone getting what they want and all the odds that are stacked against it. So that's why Scrum of One, it's a place to practice. So these are the Scrum events. And we've scaled them for one in the following slides. Planning, first step is time boxing, right? The simplest way for one person to practice the time box is to set a date and publish it. When an arts group has opening night, it doesn't get moved. It's opening night. And Dave Leiden of the Street Plans Collaborative calls this blackmailing yourself, and it works. Setting a date, publishing it. This art, by the way, I would dominate as a meme for time boxing. It's by an artist named Amy Bach, and she collected on a daily basis with regularity, drier lint. So another practice for planning at the one person scale is mapping the blanks. It's those known unknowns that sometimes get away from us. So making sure that those are all mapped out creates a kind of container to be alert for the serendipity of how to get hold of that information that we need, that we know that we need. Ethan Zuckerman talks about engineering, serendipity. What a cool phrase, right? It's creating the conditions necessary for unexpected but helpful opportunities to happen at a higher than random rate. So thank my friend, Juergen Deschmet, for tweeting about it a few days ago. So mapping the blanks, part of engineering serendipity. So the daily scrum, right? That's a simple one. What have I done in the past 24 hours? What am I going to do in the next 24 hours? Where am I blocked? That can easily be a daily journal exercise focusing on what's important to you. And one word about blocks. One of my artist friends, Rashmi, says behind every complaint there's a request. We know this when we're dealing with other people, but when we hear ourselves complain, maybe there's something to go on that backlog, something in the I wish or I need or I wonder category that can help. Sprint reviews. The act of looking is an act of leadership. Where we put our gaze carries weight. And how we see, invite others to see what we're seeing. This is a form of curation. I call it opening your curatorial eye. And we're gonna practice that now in the spirit of sprint review of looking at work. I have some work in the front six tables. Now, people who aren't at these front six tables are still gonna have a role in this exercise, but if some people wanna come up and fill some of the spots in these front six tables, that would be cool. You'll see there are some postcards. There's three postcards on the front six tables. And again, anyone who's not in the front six tables will have a role in this exercise, so just stay tuned. Before I have you flip the cards over, just wanna, it's okay. Trying to follow me, I get it. I wanted to point out one contrasting terminology from art history, from art school. We mainly look at form, color, and shape. When I do opening your curatorial eye exercises and workshops with people, we look at form, color, and shape. But we're gonna look at form first now. Just the basic contrast, the most basic, is between geometric and organic, right? The mathematical shapes that are precise and the more fluid lines that we see in nature. So, the idea is, at the front six tables, these are postcards from the Yale Art Gallery. If you'll flip them over, look at that idea of form in those three postcards, they're all random. And see what you see. See what you like, see what you notice. See what falls into the organic versus geometric category. Talk about it, feel free to talk about it, and if you see any relationships, you can talk about, just self-organize how you do it. We're gonna take five minutes, you can talk about each card individually, the relationships among them. You have your own little art exhibition. There's still a few seats, if anybody in the back is feeling lonely and wants to come up, but I'll have a job for you in a minute. If you're just coming in, you're gonna have a role in a moment, the front six tables are working on a little curation exercise. Okay, so you're halfway through. Another two and a half minutes to look at the form. And if there's one that just doesn't fit, there might be two that you find relate with each other and one that just doesn't quite fit or doesn't fit as well. And by relate, that doesn't mean they're the same or similar, it just means there's some sort of relationship that you notice that's satisfying. So when you have the one that doesn't quite fit or doesn't quite fit as well, why don't you put it off on the side? Those will be the orphans. So you've taken two, curated them together, set one off to the side so that someone, so that someone walking around the tables can easily see separate from everything else on the table. Which one is your orphan card? Yeah? Keep the other two. The beauty is there's no particular right answer. It's yours. So, okay, front six tables. You good? Can I see thumbs up when you're settled with your, okay, great, great. Now the rest of you can get into the action. We need completion of this curatorial process. I invite you to come up and circulate around the front six tables and pick up one of those orphan cards and take it to a table where it fits better, where it relates better. And you can ask the table. The table has to agree to accept it, but find a home for these orphans. Yeah, we're gonna take at least five minutes for this, so it's not a rush. Yeah, the people from the back will come through and circulate. They'll see which one you've set aside. And they'll check out all the other tables and find a good home for it. And talk about why. Talk about what you see in the form. A new orphan. All right, it's amazing when you add one element, how it changes the relationships you've already established. Yes? I don't see anyone walking around with cards anymore. Result? The bell is rung. So what happened? What's that? You set up a relationship and then it destabilizes and restabilizes, you go through several cycles of that. So congratulations, you've curated an art exhibition. It probably wasn't on your list of things to do today, but that act of curation is a unique form of communicating, showing people the relationships that you see and knowing that it's all provisional, right? All of those relationships, just like at work, what we think is cohesive can change in a minute with the addition of one additional element. And staying alert and being able to talk about what we see. So self retrospectives, I started the demo with the question about what you've done today that you wish to repeat. Does anybody wanna share their answer? Yes? That sounds, that sounds repeatable. Yes? Who else has things that they want to repeat? You wanna share? Same exercise, but different, better cards, right? I'll go back and shop at Yale some more. Yes, Bernard? It's a good question to ask every day and the list gets longer. So another thing about retrospectives, I'm gonna segue here to how I use some of the scrum of one practices and material in my relationships with clients, most of whom have no clue about Agile until they meet me. Is putting it in the agreement as a deliverable that we're going to do a retrospective. I like to accept work projects with the expectation that we're going to set aside time to talk about the process and how it felt, how we can do better next time. In some non-profit organizations that are very stressed for time, that's just the first thing that gets cut is that meta conversation about the work itself. So I make it a deliverable show that it's important. Something I tell artists and they tell me back is to be your own scrum master. The project routines and disciplines don't come easily all the time to artists, but when you look at art history, there's often been a person off to the side filling that disciplinarian role. Jackson Pollock's wife or Vincent Van Gogh's brother Theo, but being the cross-functional team inside one headspace, the artist has to take and absorb and do that themselves and different people have different tricks and tips that they've tried that they share with each other as far as setting up project routines and disciplines. And protecting the team from interruptions, the team being the creative process, the emergent process that needs to be protected from outside interruptions. Because saying yes to something and making a commitment, we know it, right? The scrum master has to do this too, is means saying no to other things. And so that's a whole exercise in itself, is expanding the vocabulary of ways to say no in order to protect commitments, in order to make sure that your yes really means something. So Lee Devon talks about the given circumstances in a situation, it's big on plot, revealing itself. So the given circumstances here are that your work plate is full, someone asks you for help, makes you a tempting offer, but you know if you say yes, you will not be able to fulfill current commitments to quality standards. So how do you handle this? What's your approach? We're gonna divide the room half into askers. Think of how you can ask somebody for help or make them a tempting offer. And the other half will be responders, and then we'll switch. So why don't we take these four tables, these front four tables, look pretty full? Anyway, one side of the room, the other side of the room, self-organize. When you have your two halves, then we'll start the exercise. No, we're just gonna split the room into two halves, and then we're gonna mix and mingle and have askers find responders. So if you guys can just get up out of your chairs and part the Red Seas, so we have basically two equal halves of the room, that would be great. Just take a minute to notice who's who. And yeah, that's good. The responders could stay seated. That makes sense. That way you know. Yeah, responders can have a seat and askers go to town on them, see how they say no, and you must say no. That's part of the exercise. It's charged sometimes. I don't know, some people don't have a problem with it, but go askers. I invite you to walk across the room and start making tempting offers and asking people for help. Anybody who's seated. Askers, don't be shy, get in there, bitch. Yeah. Okay, half a minute more, we're gonna switch. Okay. I'm gonna be seated now, and if it's not a customer or the boss, it's easy to say no. This half of the room that was seated, now you're the askers. Go to town on them, weedle them. Well, so be clients or bosses. So the askers, be clients or bosses, because those are the hardest people to say no to, right? Okay. You've got the answer? Fun saying no. This is where we expand our vocabulary a bit. Did you come up with anything new or hear anything new about ways to say no, that straight out deception. I like I'm not prepared. Somehow they think I'm going to prepare soon, even if I don't say it. Other ways? Yes? Are those the evil requests of sharing, skating, and driving the day? And we in fact responded that if you respond, it'll be very awkward to you. Huh? You don't want it in the first place, trust me. That's a good one. You just expanded my inventory. Other way, yes? Find a way to share a resource that doesn't cost you. Because the iron triangle of the solopreneur, right, is cash, headspace, and time. Yeah. Other way, yes? So you kind of compromise. The request became smaller and smaller. I have a newborn again. So the point being that when we do these things, that sometimes feel charged or difficult, it's protective. It's the flip side of saying yes to what we've committed to and what's the tension of the exercise is to expand your inventory for ways to say no when you need to say no. When your plate is full and it's important to protect, to be your own scrum master. Genuine reasons for not coming out. Well, it's something to practice. I really like I'm not prepared to do that. Yeah, I'd love to help. I simply don't have time or I wouldn't be able to fulfill my current commitment. I always say when anybody comes at me with three different reasons why they can't do something, one excuse will do just fine. Identifying your product owner, finding one person who's responsible for accepting the work, prioritizing Kurt Vonnegut in his creative writing 101 rules says write for just one person. Because when you open the windows and make love to the world, your story gets pneumonia. So the idea, again and again, I get asked to have a committee be the one ratifying my work in my working agreements and I have to kind of negotiate that and help the client understand that we're minimizing risk on the project if there's just one person because if it's a committee, what if they don't agree and that can be an impediment to the project. So identifying that product owner and then identifying with the product owner. Product owners need love, I believe. I like to set aside regular time to make sure that there's a free enough exchange of thoughts and feelings and ideas about what it's gonna take to get done that I can identify with them. And so in the beginning, identifying who that person's gonna be, inviting them to be accessible, making it fun, that charged word sometimes, but making it fun for them to be accessible and learning to identify with them so that I can have a better shot at negotiating what it is they really want. And I like this word flossom. It's like awesome, but with flaws because it's really not a matter of if we're gonna have mistakes and flaws, right? It really is a matter of when. And I believe that 100% of the effort of hiding flaws is waste. 100%. I mean, they're there. So be flossom, invite reaction. I like to let people know what my standards are for technical excellence and invite them to help point out problems and difficulties. There's two particular patterns. There's an art critique model for giving feedback and there's a whole exercise about it. It's gonna be my next blog post. So if you want more details, I'm gonna invite you to come and visit my blog. But pretty picture syndrome. That's when something is technically perfect, but still mediocre. It happens. It's one of those things you know tacitly when it's happening. Pretty picture syndrome. It's technically perfect, but it's still mediocre. And another beautiful work, shoddy frame, right? You just put as much effort into following through on the presentation. So I always thank people for their reaction because it's important even just to, my artist friend Rashmi again says just to make someone feel is a good thing. Keep the relationship alive. So the artists I talk with are dedicated to being lovers of reality. It's one of the dangers of practicing. Scrum of one practices, right? You get to be a lover of reality. And Scrum is an empirical process. It's about recognizing seeing what is if we're gonna make the journey across all the risk and uncertainty to what we want. We have to open our eyes and get in touch with what is. So there's a many, many focusing exercises out there and it's good to have your own and we know this. But even at work going into a difficult meeting or making a decision, having that minute to focus first. And there's a focusing exercise that I do with clients too that goes back to that set of given circumstances. It's outlined, I left a few sprinkled around on the tables, a few templates for a working agreement I use with clients who have no idea about Agile. But it's structured in a way that can support agility for the project. At least it's working out okay. It can always be perfected. But take a look, give me feedback, I'd be interested. But there's a context section at the top. And that's that getting in touch with reality with the client upfront. Creating a shared context out of which the work can emerge. It's got sections for the organization. This particular moment in time, what's happening now for the organization? The cast of characters, who's involved? And then my approach or inclination within that given set of circumstances. Sure. For a fixed price engagement, try it and see. Most of the time I use it, it's in as a fixed price. Yeah. I'm not delivering software, I'm delivering written deliverables which I believe are a kind of code, deploying writing that's supposed to do something in the world, but. But you do this in place? Yeah, I usually, usually, yeah. I don't sell my time, I sell the value. So just a couple wrap up thoughts on what might happen if you're practicing scrum as an individual or scrum of one. Believe me, I'm not trying to co-opt and run off and create some package. It's more the thought of what if, what if we try scaling down just to loosen up all that tight energy around the whole conversation about scaling up. Just move it in the other direction, see what happens, that's what this is about. So you might start to seek out uncomfortable truths at every opportunity. No one, organizations and colleagues that will just tell you what you wanna hear or only wanna listen to what they wanna hear, that's not how trust develops, right? I love it when I get to work with people who wanna work with me, not because of any particular methodology or bag of tricks, but because there's that vibe, that individuals and their interactions are working, they're gelling and we know that we're gonna listen to each other and we're gonna seek out uncomfortable truths and not shrink from them. And introspection is always an important thing and artists certainly model that for us, right? Being in touch with what is, doing what we can to stay that way and then introspecting and bringing back to it what we find, what we find to be true about ourselves. Who knows, they're Myers-Briggs? Yeah, so are there other things that you know about yourself, like if you like to, if left to your own devices, if you don't have to get up in the middle of the night to have a conference call with a remote team, do you work better in the morning or the evening? We know this kind of stuff about ourselves, right? So these things can be either constraints or simply useful information as we structure projects. Gonna end with a quote here and then we'll take some questions or discussion if you like, those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people for they may act their dream with open eyes and make it possible. So scrum is sometimes described as the art of the possible and I get inspired by artists all the time about what's possible, so thank you. And this is, I wanna thank the artists who contributed through workshops and speaking with me over the past year since I got this crazy idea. Independent Software is a team at my co-work space in New Haven, Connecticut. They partially sponsored me to come. Here's Twitter and my blog and my co-work space, The Grove. And I love to hang out so we can talk by video at any point if you like. So thank you very much for coming and I hope you got value.