The Spirit of Scrum: Road to Joy

Tobias Mayer will facilitate a one day Workshop in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is targeted to Scrum Masters and agile coaches.

An exploration of the foundational principles and values of Scrum. This session bypasses Scrum practices (which it is assumed participants are familiar with) and will explore Scrum at a deeper, more human level. Through a series of games, interactive exercises and facilitated discussion a deeper understanding of the new mindset required to do Scrum will be acquired. This is not about methodology or process, it is about joy.

Date: January 28^th, 2010
Where: Perú 375, 1^st floor (Southworks)
Cost: usd 220 + VAT
Registration: http://tinyurl.com/tobiasBsAsWorkshop

This event is organized by Agiles Argentina and Agilar Argentina

keywords: collaboration empiricism prioritization rhythm Scrum self-organizationtimebox

Process/Mechanics

Scrum is quickly being seen as the de facto way of starting out down an Agile pathway. People see it as a quick and easy way in. The problem is that Scrum is very easily misunderstood. There are a multitude of Scrum Facades in place around the world, companies who claim to be doing Scrum because they have people with the titles of “Scrum Master” and “Product Owner”, have daily meetings, maybe even planning meetings, reviews and retrospectives, keep a backlog of work and show some sort of burn down graph each sprint.

Underneath the facade though, the same old command and control beast lurks, the same old fear and CYA behavior. Nothing has essentially changed. So what is missing? I believe the spirit of Scrum is missing, the essence of change.

Scrum is not just a framework and a set of roles, meetings and artifacts. Scrum is a way of being that is utterly different from any previous way of working that we have encountered in the software industry. To do Scrum — to really do Scrum — requires an absolute shift in the way we think and act.

Scrum relies on some core principles:
— Empiricism
— Self-Organization
— Collaboration
— Prioritization
— Rhythm

and some essential values:
— Courage
— Trustfulness
— Transparency

This session will allow Scrum practitioners to reach the next level of Scrum by exploring some of these underlying foundations in a highly experiential way. The session will consist of a series of interactive exercises and facilitated discussion designed to help participants not just understand, but embody these principles and values at a deep level.

I create and/or adapt new games frequently, the majority require no props, and usually require the participants to be on their feet. Most have simple formats and can be easily remembered. None of them have pre-determined outcomes: they are all about self-discovery. For more detailed information on the kinds of games and interactive exercises I’ll use for this session please follow one or more of these links to descriptions of sessions I have run previously.

• Agile Thinking — Agile2005 session

• Great Game of Power — Scrum Exchange 2006 session

• Scale Back: Small is Beautiful — Agile2008 session

• Operating on the Creative Edge — Agile2008 session

This session is intended as a taster and it is hoped participants will be encouraged to explore more deeply the human interaction foundations of Scrum once they leave the conference.

Learning outcomes

• Tobias Mayer has built a reputation in the Scrum world of offering highly challenging training sessions, pushing people to the edge of their comfort zone and ultimately breaking through to a new way of behaving. This session has that same outcome in mind.