To increase the effectiveness of a Scrum Master, or more accurately, an Agile Coach shepherding a Scrum team, we must shift the responsibilities of the Scrum Master as stated in the Scrum Guide from: "The Scrum Master is accountable for establishing Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. They do this by helping everyone understand Scrum theory and practice, both within the Scrum Team and the organization. The Scrum Master is accountable for the Scrum Team’s effectiveness. They do this by enabling the Scrum Team to improve its practices, within the Scrum framework." To "The Scrum Master is accountable for assisting their teams to be effective in delivering value to their customers. They do this by integrating the theories of Flow, Lean, and the Theory of Constraints into the Scrum Framework. They may bend the Scrum framework if it increases value delivery while lowering the waste being inadvertently created." In other words, we switch from the means to the goal. Amplio acknowledges you may end up not doing Scrum. That's why we call our approach Amplio Scrum. Amplio Scrum goes beyond the immutability of Scrum because it is based on the first principles of knowledge work and provides you with methods to tell if a change is likely to be better or not. Guidance is provided on the reality of how the world works and not a simplistic model that doesn't apply everywhere. It's about continuous improvement as in the Agile Manifesto's "We are uncovering better ways of developing..." But your focus is on effectiveness, not following a framework, as in the Manifesto's "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools." We call the person making this shift an Amplio Scrum Master. They should be capable of coaching 2 Scrum teams and still have time left to work with management on improving the organization's eco-system. Alternatively, they may work with 3-5 Scrum teams that have dependencies with each other. How is this possible? We focus on eliminating the high total cost of Scrum. - Scrum has a very high total cost of ownership. The reasons for this are: - No first principles of knowledge work are presented in standard Scrum training. This requires teams to follow Scrum’s immutable approach even when it’s not fit for purpose in order to keep doing Scrum. - Scrum uses inspect and adapt instead of building models of understanding with double-loop learning. - Scrum is focused more on certification than on understanding how to get the job done - Scrum teams have to re-invent many practices because Scrum does not provide them with a way to select which practices would be best for them. - New teams have to solve the same problems when they start with Scrum because of the above issues. - Being a more effective Scrum Master requires learning new concepts that avoid the waste described above. Read below to continue the lesson embedded in the Amplio Community of practice and then take the first comment to get a 6 minute overview of the program.
Daniel Gagnon
11mo
Scrum is now actually older in years-since-formalized terms than "Waterfall" was when Scrum first appeared. Methinks the horse hath expired, might it perchance be a good time to discontinue the flogging? The way forward is to address the cognitive biases at the leadership level that have consistently put a grass ceiling on all grassroots efforts at transformation. Fish rots from the head down - no amount or level of "team agility" will make one iota of difference until fear has been banished from the workplace. And this has happened at astonishingly few workplaces. So Scrum On, Kanban On, Amplio On ... you're pursuing a mirage.
Go here to see a 6 minute overview of the program https://videopress.com/v/4hg6H7qT