A Global Scrum Gathering was held at Singapore last July 17 – 19. It was my first time to attend a gathering and visit Singapore. I had a wonderful time learning and having discussions with people who share my passion in being Agile. Global Scrum Gatherings are events organized by the Scrum Alliance (not to be confused with the Rebel Alliance) held at various cities around the world throughout the year.
Key Takeaways
The gathering started with a great Opening Keynote by David Lim, leader of a Singapore expedition to Mount Everest. One of the key takeaways he shared is: “Teamwork is an individual skill.” I have been thinking about this since I heard it from the keynote. I usually say “great teamwork” to the whole team, maybe I should also commend team members individually. It is the skill of individuals (communication, establishing good working relationships) which brings about great teamwork. Each one of us must be passionate about working with others to make teams succeed.
It was nice to make new friends from the Agile Community at the event. I have been able to share my experiences of being Agile while working mostly with remote teams. People were interested, I think they were like: “Is this guy for real?” Hahaha! This made me eager to get this blog going. I have also heard about various challenges met by Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches: a team member doesn’t want to follow Scrum, people are not engaged, getting support from management, pushing for changes in the company, dealing with culture, etc.
I attended the Coach’s Clinic to ask the question: “How can we have engaging retrospective meetings while working remotely from one another?” Dave Bales, from AgileMe, pointed me back to the Agile Manifesto. “People and interactions over processes and tools.” There is no substitute to having good personal relationships with teammates. It all comes down to how well you know the people you are working with.
Some of the key takeaways which I got from the sessions:
- The framework should provide guidance but the organization should evolve beyond the guidance.
- The best way to engage people is to invite them. Deciding is very engaging. Give people the choice.
- Because of Neuroplasticity it takes 6-12 months to get the habit as a structural part of our brain, stored in long term memory.
- Communities of Practice helps develop individuals to be cross-functional.
- “Improve evolutionary” – we aim to evolve, we don’t know the end state, constantly changing
- In Kanban, there is no end goal, there is only continuous improvement
- Kanban: When determining how fast the team can get a PBI done, look at the histogram of cycle times of PBIs and go with the desired percentage of confidence to get the estimated cycle time. Do not go with averages.
Open Space
On the second day of the conference we had Open Space. This was my first time to experience it and I was surprised by the value I got from it. There were two sessions which I really enjoyed attending. One session was about retrospective meetings and the other was about what to do when things don’t go well. I learned how to better facilitate retrospective meetings and how to ask powerful questions. I will write another blog post to share lessons learned from these sessions.
Conclusion
Attending the gathering let me experience a lot of great firsts. I am very thankful for the support of the company for letting me attend the event. I was very tired! When you are working at home you are not used to interacting with a lot of people so it got very exhausting for me. No pain, no gain! It was all good, and I can not wait to attend my next Global Scrum Gathering!
Remote Agility 