This week, an advanced scrummaster in distress. He comes from a different background than facilitation, coaching, and he just got hit full force by reality, like in those old “hall of mirrors” rides, boom, like John Lee Hooker, boom boom. A big conversation starts. For some external actors observing us: “it’s sad to see what this system does to sm/coaches/to people passionate about excellence. It’s harsh.” But that’s the heart of our profession, that’s what we love, that’s exactly what all the people who criticize coaching don’t see.

In any case, here I have an advanced scrummaster down on the ground. With all the symptoms of distress. He has completely locked himself into his beliefs, for him it’s a double whammy. He experienced something very harsh (and unacceptable): getting chewed out like dirt for no valid reason. I’ve been asking him for a while to do intervision within the group, because I can sense that the context isn’t simple and that he needs support. But unfortunately he’s doing it too late perhaps. I’m not the most affable in my support: he waited too long, he’ll get the truth. And I think that’s what he needs, the truth (mine), about the context, and his action, even if it means making him hit another wall (it’s because I value him that I confront him, and confrontation is not malice or violence).

I first tell this person: step back, breathe, let time pass, let it go.

What I take away from this context that resembles many others: it’s the jungle, a circus of strongmen, contradictory injunctions, games of deception. Scrum teams. Everyone is fighting over velocity, capacity, estimates, the pressure is very present. In that case, stop your antics, stop your beautiful speeches, stop your fancy vocabulary, stop your guru definitions (about the DOR, systemic thinking, or about the beauty of this or that type of sprint). Come back to something very concrete. Concrete stuff. I explain this. Someone answers “But the CFD shows that the story points…”. No, the CFD (Cumulative Flow Diagram) is unreadable. An 8-year-old child would know absolutely nothing about it. “You’re pissing me off with your 8-year-old child”. Maybe, but believe me, if that child can’t read it, your thing is truly not made to communicate anything with anyone. Come back to earth, you need to stop your disconnected engineer bullshit. And then “story points” doesn’t mean anything. Give me something concrete. By talking “story points” in a toxic context, you’re talking into the void. Chaos, confrontation: we go back to basics, to concrete. Nils adds to the discussion, “go back to basics, discipline, hygiene”.

What would that be? Something I always ask when I support a scrum team, and that I see too few people do, nor few people write about. For me it works very well every time. You know what? No theory, No vision, No values, nothing. nada. Just display what’s happening.. What does that mean? At the beginning of each iteration, the team breaks down into tasks everything it’s going to do, or that it does. We try to limit each element to something not too big (without any other form of precision). And then we see. A board with to do, in progress, done, as usual. A curve that shows that the number of elements to do goes down over the days, or goes up when we discover other elements, or stays flat when we finish nothing. NO THEORY, NO CONCEPTS (story points, dor, cfd, systemic thinking, etc.) just display what’s happening, and say out loud what’s happening. Discipline, hygiene, those are the right words. And neutrality. Here’s what’s happening. Let the games of deception crash against this reality.

Don’t put anglicisms or English words in your statements! That hides concepts that will trap you (yes you can mock my article title).

The team doesn’t like breaking things down. It’s tiring, it requires brain juice. They don’t like it. They’re lazy like all of us. And also they don’t like exposing themselves to other team members, they prefer the comfort of obscurity. Yet it generates a nice team dynamic (and in their obscurity they don’t hear people talking about them). And also they’re afraid, with good reason, of being monitored, and scolded if necessary. For this: this breakdown and this graph are ephemeral: at the end of the iteration, they disappear. And no one puts any name on any element: it’s team work. This poses no problem (electronic tool or not): I’ve often experienced this.