How to Effectively Monitor SD-WAN and SASE Environments with ThousandEyes
Confessions of a scrum mom - how the heroics of a scrum mum doesn't scale
1. Confessions of a Scrum Mum
How the short term heroics of a Scrum Mum
doesn’t scale
Presented by: Mia Horrigan
Partner Zen Ex Machina
@miahorri
2. Soccer Novice
• Knew nothing about soccer when Gem started
• Started to learn rules, watch EPL, play FIFA xbox
• Picked up some ideas and became Soccer Mum
3. Soccer Mum
• Run around trying to “help” prepare for the game
• Directing play, yelling instructions from sidelines
• Tell her what she did right and wrong
• Then Gem got picked in Development Squad…..
4. Parents briefing at AIS
• Congratulations your child has skills…..
• We were to watch in silence, provide no
coaching
• No place for Soccer Mums at squad level
5. Dear Scrum Mum……
• Was I being a “Soccer Mum” at work?
• I feel protective of the team and wanted them to
be successful but was I holding them back?
7. “The Scrum Guy”
• Rudimentary skills , very little experience
• Team secretary, lists impediments
• Black and White on process
• Results into low-performing teams
8. “Scrum Mum”
• Protective to their teams
• “Takes care of everything” to remove impediments
• Teams functional, but not challenged
• Results in Team stagnation
9. “True Scrum Master”
• Mentors and develops high performing teams
• Involves everyone, progressively delegates
• Challenges the team to be innovative
• Encouraging, collaborative and motivating
• Team able to learn and continuously improve
11. Parallel to my evolution as a
Scrum Coach
• 15+ years of program management and
practitioner roles in service delivery
• Was used to being the “Manager” directing
teams, making decisions, resolving problems
12. Trying to be a Scrum Mum at
Scale
• Agile Coach across 8 teams
• Component teams delivering services
• Digital Transformation
• Running around trying to plug holes, make
decisions and directing the teams
14. People learn skills in 4 stages
Shu: Learn a technique
Ha: Collect techniques
Ri: Invent / blend techniques
Kokoro: Simplify
16. Stuck in the “Shu” box
• Stuck in process land
• Stagnation, burnout, no improvement, no innovation
• Succeeding because of a few good individuals
17. “Scrum Mum” Anti Pattern
• Directing and telling the team what to do
• Teams never become empowered or self managing
• Not sustainable, NOT scalable
18. Rules that are broken
• #5 - Build projects around motivated individuals. Give
them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done.
• #11 - The best architectures, requirements, and
designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
• #12 - At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behaviour accordingly.
20. Soccer Coach - Academy
• Saw how he helped her consolidate the 10
key skills in soccer
• Did drills, showed how to read the play so she
could make split second decision required
23. “A” Level Coach
• Gem made elite squad (FIFA World Cup 2015)
• Coach was practitioner (ex Matilda), trainer,
mentor, motivator, leader and change agent
• Made it simple, targeted, focused disciplined
24. Elite Agile Coach
Core behaviours:
Listen
Ask deep questions
Empower
Enable to act
Reinforce behaviour
Increase insight
26. Conclusions
• Being a Scrum Mum is an anti pattern – not
sustainable, not scalable
• Just looking after the integrity of the Process not
enough either to enable teams to learn or improve
• Good Leadership requires a contingency based
approach (Fiedler et al, 1967)
• Coach needs to be a leader – help the team through
its maturity based on its context of need for
improvement to be repeatable, sustainable and
long-lived