🎲 🎛️ 🧖🏿 Everyday life of Scrum-Masters: team and self transformation 👨🏾‍🌾 🐥 🥈

Has it ever happened to you that while communicating, reading or studying something, it dawns on you that some of the old or current situations literally appears in a new light? This happens to me all the time, this time while reading the book “The ABC of System Thinking” by Donella Meadows.

Not so long ago I got into two teams of Scrum practitioners. One team has not started long ago, the other has been around for more than a year. Both have the same problem, teams, or rather team members slide into old work habits when they worked in component teams or functional wells.

One of Donella’s appeals and tips in the book is to pay attention not to specific Events, but to the Behavior of the System as a whole and how it is structured.

An event is the result of the manifestation of a particular System Behavior, which can be revealed through observation of events. Observing the behavior: what causes it, how this call is processed inside the system and, as a result, a manifestation in the form of an event is born, we can draw conclusions about the Structure of the system, its elements and the relationships that determine this behavior.

Hereinafter, the team and the system will be synonymous.

Event, Behavior, Structure

Roll-up team in terms of Events

There is a fact - the team slipped into old habits, abandoned some of the mandatory events and artifacts of Scrum, which enhances its peak.

My solution to the problem at the Event level would be to conduct a new training or restart the team.

Rolling a team in terms of Behavior

When solving a problem at the Event level, I, as a rule, do not take into account the reason why this event occurred, but it is caused by the normal Behavior of the team - Habit Power .

The strength of a habit is similar to the force of attraction from physics. Here the old habits are Earth. Team - an object launched into space and moving to the moon, to new habits. Training or another “Scrum injection” is an Acceleration Impulse , the energy of which is spent on overcoming the force of attraction. When team members spend impulse energy on how to learn to work in a new way.

Old habits are even stronger than new ones, so over time the team rolls into them, the energy of the acceleration impulse is no longer enough, or it has exhausted itself. These are states when a team knows how to work on Scrum, but still does not know how, or even knows how to work on Scrum, but a new habit has not yet formed. We are closer to the Earth than to the Moon, therefore the Earth's gravitational forces are stronger than the Moon's gravitational forces.

Having made a single “injection”, without understanding the reason for the Event, the moment I notice that the team is degrading again, this will mean that we, as a team, have already sank very deeply.

In systemic thinking, this is called the delay effect, in this case it consists of a delay in perception and a delay in response. The event must first occur and pass a certain threshold of sensitivity for us to notice (delayed perception). After we noticed this, it takes us some time to think and decide on further actions (delayed response).

Most often this happens when the Scrum-Master has more than one team and he focuses on working with one of them or simply does not have time to work with everyone at the same time. Less often, when the Scrum-Master is young and not experienced, but he has one team.

Solving the problem at the Behavior level of the system, I will be laid on the frequency of such “injections” without waiting for the moment when the strength of the impulse becomes less than the strength of the team’s habit.

What is a Scrum injection? It can have a different look: a reference visit to a successful Scrum team, communication with an inspiring Agile expert, training in interesting practice, game simulations, etc. - their goal is to spark in the team a desire to work differently, to work in the spirit of Scrum.

Flight of the team from Earth to the moon

Roll-up team in terms of Structure

I believe that Scrum-Masters are often so good that they unknowingly keep the team in good shape, not allowing it to slip into their constant “injections”. Because of this, an effect similar to the “observer effect” is present in the system.

While I, as a Scrum-Master, are included in the system and observe these events and the behavior of the team, I influence what is happening in it. Once I leave the team for a sufficiently long period of time, I don’t know what is happening in it, and I can’t influence it. With my exit, the system will change, since one of the structural elements will be taken out of it, and with it the relationships and flows that I introduced into it will disappear. In this case, the regular “Scrum injections” that come from me as Scrum Masters will disappear.

This is exactly what happened with the teams. They were left without a Scrum-Master for some time and this time was enough for them to crawl towards old habits.

Solving the problem at the level of the Structure - the team itself should make such “injections” for itself. As a Scrum-Master, I need to transfer this work to the team, to make it more autonomous and resistant to periods of absence of the Scrum-Master. Make these “self-injections” a new habit that will allow the team to reach not only the moon, but also other planets.

The scheme of energy flows within the team

Self transformation

Do you think that's all? But no. Reading the book, I first untwisted this story for the team, and then transferred this pattern of behavior of the teams to myself.

I actively study, closing gaps in knowledge and experience to be a good Scrum-Master. At the moment of the beginning of the study of a new field of knowledge and, some time after the end, the period begins and lasts when I integrate and apply this knowledge in life. Then, the more time passes from the moment of spiritualization with this knowledge, the more I crawl into old habits. (Event)

I am in the Stream and study on the principle of “A good spoon for dinner.” I’m studying what is connected with the problems and tasks that I face in the moment. This means that I do not observe and do not track myself, and I do not even remember that this needs to be done in terms of skill development (It seems that someone does not know how to learn). Events remain unnoticed and this is repeated from time to time again and again. (Behavior)

As a result, it turns out that young sprouts of embedded skills either die or passively develop at best. Their death means that then again serious investments will be required for their repeated landing.

How to fix it?

Hypothesis No. 1: In order to fix this at the level of the Structure, you need to transfer the work of Event Tracking to the coach, declaring it as the Goal - maintaining and developing a new skill until it becomes a new habit. (I am a team, a coach is a Scrum-master.)

Hypothesis No. 2: To fix this at the Behavior level, you need to add to the to-do list, called the “Schedule”, an event scheduled for a certain date whose goals are: to revise my current behavior in the context of development a certain skill and re-injection of energy for its development and application. (Self-injection)

Afterword

Perhaps you have already read about it somewhere, I would be grateful if you share the links in the comments. Sounds like quality content to me.

So far, the knowledge that I myself have reached is best fixed and assimilated in me. The book “The ABC of System Thinking” is not about Agile at all, but it was this philosophical quality ... I did not have enough knowledge to transform my existing experience into useful applied knowledge.