Posts tagged team
Product Owner takes Vacation?
May 12th
The role of a Product Owner with in Scrum teams or that of a Customer in XP teams is critical to the success of the product. What to do? – when they take vaction. What are your options? Say your product owner is going on a planned vacation for a couple of weeks, effectively unavailable to the team for an entire sprint. Based on my experience at coaching and working with Agile teams, I have found following options that do not work:
1. The business owner (PO’s boss) takes the solo role of the product owner over.
Pro: Business Owner is the single representative voice of customer. Business Owner has the authority and the responsibility to make product decisions.
Con: S/He is not available for much of the time, delaying decisions.
Con: Business Owner does not have detailed knowledge of the domain.
Your PO’s boss most often will not have time to spend with the team and lack of domain knowledge renders the business owner dangerous to provide direction for a sprint. Also, given his seniority he may have other important stuff to take care, like assuming non-PO responsibilities that your PO was fulfilling within the organization.
2. Hybrid: UX Questions go to Interaction Designer, Reporting Questions go to Business Intelligence Analyst, Strategic Product Questions go to the Business Owner. Scrum master is quarter back for these questions – ensuring they are routed to the right place. When there are unresolved questions, they are decided by Business Owner.
Pro: Balances workload among contributing experts
Con: More workload on the scrum master
Con: Communication may break down between different members
Con: Who accepts stories?
Too many people wearing the virtual PO hat with the real PO in vacation and the real-temporary PO behind the scenes. Too much confusion for anyone’s taste.
3. The product owner postpones vacation.
Pro: Team doesn’t loose their product owner
Con: Delay in vacation causes trip prices to climb in the summer
This option is really not sustainable, people ought to be able to take vacation and not penalized for doing a good job.
4. Get another analyst to come up to speed. Someone comes on the project two weeks earlier to understand the domain and serves as proxy during the sprint.
Pro: Keeps the single decision maker.
Pro: Availability of analysts is more realistic than Business Owner taking this over
Con: Unfamiliar with the domain.
Startup time/cost to get a proxy product owner ready means effort spent by current PO and other team members during prior sprint which may cause drop in delivery of valuable functionality that would have been delivered otherwise.
5. Product Owner answers emails from Europe with 1 day time lag
Pro: Single decision maker is kept
Con: Time delay for questions, reducing velocity
Then it is not a vacation and true product owners take vacations!
What can you do?
One of the team member assumes a dual role of Product Owner and Team member. Ensure that this is not the scrum master.
Sooner or later, the PO has to trust the team to make domain level/product level decisions. Hopefully during these previous sprints the team has had an insight into PO’s thinking process and gained insight into PO’s implicit knowledge about how the product should work and feel. There may be some Subject Matter Expertise, like biz rules, that they need from other Analysts and they can ask these SME’s for guidance however the responsibility of final product should not seep out of the Scrum team (SM + PO + Dev team). Also, having a team member play this dual role is better than
i. Training a new person to play proxy role. (option 4)
ii. Getting a less domain knowledge person make decisions (option 1)
iii. Causing identity crisis for the rest of organization (option 2) ;)
The worst that can happen is that the person who is playing the dual roles, blows-up a two week sprint. On the bad side, 2 – weeks’ worth time and effort is lost. However on the good side, the PO will know how well the development team has so far understood PO’s product vision and incremental steps so far (previous sprints) towards that vision. A great learning opportunity! (Above mentioned worst case can also happen with option 1, 2 and 4 however there can be tendency to cop out and blame the “outsider” rather than look inwards and see where a team can learn.)
There are two characteristics that I seek in my suggested solution:
1. Learning opportunity
2. Avoid diffusion/confusion of responsibility
Many thanks to Ed Kraay, my collegue and friend at SolutionsIQ, who recently helped one of our client product owner’s to fulfill his vacation commitment.
My favorite Coaching Experience
Apr 23rd
Couple of years ago, my good friend Subhayu was visiting me in Seattle. In India we would often hike together through remote hills in Western Ghats. So it seemed appropriate that I sign up myself, Subhayu and one other friend of mine from Seattle, Ben, for a day of adventure. Whitewater rafting seemed appealing at that moment. My friends had no prior experience with whitewater rafting. My adventurous self had only once been through the Skykomish river Class IV and Class V rapids, wherein my group avoided some of the dreaded Class V rapids and walked our rafts along the shore. This time however, I wanted the real deal and signed with a professional guide who would coach and guide us through Class IV and Class V rapids on the White Salmon River. To my excitement White Salmon River rafters have an option to paddle through air while falling fourteen feet over Husum Falls.
Class V Rapid - Husum Falls, WA
Subhayu, Ben and I reached rendezvous point on time. Parked our car, checked into wet suites, and signed release forms. We drove in a shuttle to the launch site where we were provided very important safety talk by our guides. Which, and I blame it on too many airplane flights, I did not pay much attention to. The agency that I had signed us up with had many professional guides and many other people like us, so we were divided into groups of six with one guide per raft. My group had my friends and three other guys who I had never met before.
First hour on our trip was as gentle as whitewater rafting can be. During this period, our guide patiently explained how we should position ourselves on the raft and how to paddle through water. She explained some voice commands and we practiced steering our raft as per her guidance. Initially we struggled a lot with our raft practically going nowhere, however as we practiced and practiced our group got a hang of it.
The next hour and half was far more challenging, full of excitement with twists and turns often spinning our raft 360 degrees. We soon realized that unlike typical boats, rafts in choppy whitewater do not have a fixed bow and stern. It changes all the time where in once you are in the front and the next moment you are at the steer end of the situation. Over the crash of the waves, screams, big boulders and near misses we stayed tuned to voice commands from our guide. She did a great job of keeping her head above the fear and thrill of the moment to harness our energy towards an exciting ride, so far. During brief moments of lull she would tell us stories of other trips that she had taken through these waters. These ranged from pleasant stories of wildlife sightings and terrifying rescues of overturned rafts. We had our first scare while navigating around a big boulder. Subhayu lost balance and was hanging upside down with only one of his feet in the raft and the rest of him getting tossed around in water. Through combined effort from a couple of group members we were able to pull him back up into the boat – disaster averted! We played with a few minor scares wherein later Subhayu grabbed me just in time to save me the experience of chilled water head first.
In retrospect, these scares prepared us well for what Husum Falls had in store. Husum Falls, with its fourteen feet drop is the cherry on top this cake. This is why I had dragged my friends along. Prior to negotiating the falls, we rested our raft on the shore, walked a bit to visually inspect the falls and pep talk each other to sign up for the adventure. Having secured our agreement our guide coached us for the specifics of rafting over this insane drop. We were to paddle until we catch the current, then we steer to get the right angle of approach for the falls and when she yells, we all crouch down with our paddles rested to cling as close to the floor of the raft as possible. This last bit about crouching was very important because as the raft hits the bottom of the falls it behaves as compressed spring. First bending and then springing open to regain its shape, and this rubber band effect is strong enough to flip people overboard.
And she said, “you don’t want that” – in a tone reflecting her motherly meanness.
So we earnestly practiced a couple of dry runs to get the crouching part right. She observed and corrected us. We were now ready and just in time, since the current was now pulling us rapidly.
To see what its like to raft through Husum Falls (See Video Link)
Our guide, she steered our raft, just as she said she would. She positioned us for the angle of approach, just as she said she would. We couched to the bottom of the raft, just as we said we would. We hit the bottom of the drop, just as she said we would and then our guide, our coach fell overboard.
Joyous rapture of our accomplishment was soon terror stricken by the realization that our commander was rapidly drifting away from our raft. I remember the deer in the headlights look on the faces of the guys in the boat, I remember people from the shore yelling something at us.I also remember one of guys on the boat throw the “Hail Mary” towards our coach.
Throw Bag - Safety Rope
This was a joke that our coach had shared with us a few hours ago when we were in calmer waters. She was talking about a throw bag that is shaped like a football that you throw towards a person who is overboard hoping that they can catch on to the rope and have a chance to get back into the raft. Fortunately the throw was good or the gods took mercy, our guide was able to fight the undercurrent of the falls and get to the bag. Crisis one averted.
Crisis two and this had all of us gripped in fear. We were without our guide in the boat and were drifting rapidly downstream with no experience to navigate the rest of the course. Something happened at that moment of crisis. Without a word being exchanged we all realized the gravity of our predicament, we picked a direction, we all paddled in unison and like a single self-organized unit put into practice everything that we had learned over the last couple of hours to get to one of the shores. Having secured a stationary position on mother earth, we reeled in our coach from choppy waters into our raft.
Much of what happened next is a blur. The experience shadowed rest of my journey down the river. I remember feelings of bitterness and abandonment, for if our guide was really good, really professional, she would not have flipped overboard in the first place and I would not have had to fight for life and limb at the bottom of Husum falls. Our guide on the other hand was very complimentary, saying that she was very proud of us and that we pulled it all together just like a great team would.
On our return car trip back to Seattle, my friends and I talked about our guide. Initially we questioned her effectiveness and ability. But as long road trips go, there are sober moments of reflection where the truth dawns upon you. We realized that we probably had the best coach we could have ever asked for, she trained us on the basics of navigation, she trained us on working together, and she trained us on dealing with crisis. She prepared us enough that when it mattered most, we delivered. This realization that coaches are humans too and do err, told us that her moment of coaching greatness was realized when she was not in the raft guiding us.
My rafting experience can probably be related to coaching software teams; I however will not attempt to draw lengthy parallels. Having coached many software development teams, I tend to value my contribution by what a team does when I’m not with them over what the team does when I’m with them.
Betsy the cow
Jan 9th
As an Agile coach I enjoy the opportunity to learn from people implementing scrum framework and incorporating Agile values and principles. In this process I come across interesting stories and metaphors. After an introductory training session with one team and some follow up coaching during sprint planning, Paul (team member) shared his impression of the situation the team was put-in with this new scrum and Agile thing -
Back on the farm, if a cow isn’t producing more milk than cost of the feed she eats, unless someone really likes scratching her between the ears as a pet, sooner or later she ends up as hamburger.
I must admit that when I heard of it for the first time, I felt very uneasy. It is a very blunt analogy getting straight to the primary design benefit of scrum – Maximize Return on Investment (ROI). If at the end of every sprint the organization does not believe it can get sufficient ROI over the cost of development, then there are “Or Else …” scenarios that the organization can pursue. Scrum does not tell you about what you should do, it simply brings transparency into the system and provides opportunities for early adjustments. The thing that concerned me was that the team had likened the “or else…” scenario with Betsy ending up on organization’s menu. At that time I expected the team to get over their initial fears and move forward with a more positive outlook. It was not to be so, a sprint later I saw a picture of cow-cuts on top their team task board. 
Had this team drifted deeper and darker with Betsy’s supposed fate?
Successful cross-functional teams that I worked with, have a sense of identity that is separate from their job titles or departmental affiliations or other organizational chart bindings. As a coach, the simplest thing that I have done to trigger such a sense of identity, is to facilitate scrum teams through an exercise to help them create their team name. Although I floated this idea of creating a team name to the team described above, they did not feel it was necessary for them to do so. Instead this team had adopted Betsy as their team mascot and coalesced around the notion of saving Betsy from her predicament sprint after sprint after sprint.
Over the last 10 or so two week sprints, I have had the pleasure of working with this team intermittently and I have observed the team adopt Betsy into everything they do and innovate along the way.
Before I delve further, some context about this team is due. Each of the team members has a minimum of at-least 15 years of software industry experience. The team works for a well known insurance provider and does sustainment engineering for all business processing applications. They interact with customer account managers that are transferring big organizational health care insurance benefits to be managed by their company, customer service personal that are serving individual insurance beneficiaries and operations support that manages changes to production systems. Like many scrum teams they are in a very complex environment. Their complexity is compounded by the urgency of fixes requested from the business side and from the necessity of their operations and DBA group to ensure quality of fixes. They are not immune from challenges associated with organization silo’s wherein the DBA group cannot dedicate any member to the scrum team so as to form a truly cross-functional scrum team. On the plus side they have an excellent scrum team very well supported by their ScrumMaster and ably directed by their Product Owner, who is from the business side of the organization.
So what does it mean to save Betsy within their context? There are many dimensions to addressing this question.
- From a software delivery perspective, the team commits to delivering software product fixes and enhancements to production environment every sprint. I remember this interesting conversation where the team was discussing their definition of done. Question arose, whether they should commit against a definition of done when elements of done-ness, such as production database updates, are beyond the authorized scope of the team members (DBA group owns production updates). At the end of their dialogue every one in the team agreed that only software that is in use by end-users constitutes valuable software. Although they do not directly manage production updates, they believe it is their responsibility to shepherd updates into production environment. In effect, every sprint they committed against a definition of done that required product backlog items to be implemented in production environment. This required them to engage representative from DBA during their daily stand-up, working with the DBA group to work with their constraints, such as no production updates on Wednesdays & Fridays. Also building automation test scripts to validate quality prior to review by DBA’s, effectively reducing rework cycles.
- Engaging sustained participation from business. Prior to their scrum implementation customer issues and requests from business side were some times, lost in the ether. It was not unusual for the team to come across requests or tickets that were more than a year old. Through regular prioritization by the product owner the team was able to focus on the highest priority fixes that needed to be addressed. The ScrumMaster was very effective at challenging the team to change long held organizational-cultural habits. One such behaviour of their silo-ed environment was that of communicating ticket status through the bug tracking system. All too often tickets that were resolved and ready for functional acceptance were not looked at by the business person for closure. This resulted in delayed production updates for several resolved issues. Team members started interacting in face-to-face conversations with business people to better understand their tickets and following up with them to confirm functional acceptance. Such proactive steps drastically reduced wait times involved.
- Complete transparency. Here’s a snapshot of their task board :
- Being the only scrum team in their organization, sustaining healthy relationships within the team and with others who interact with the team is critical. One of their approaches is to manage this through recognition: Every sprint the team recognizes people who have contributed to save Betsy. This cute little award
is given to people within the team or outside the team for their contribution towards saving Betsy. 
- Addressing root cause for recurring issues. The team routinely analyzes commonly recurring issues and implements fixes that addresses the root cause for these issues.
- Having fun! team members flex their creative muscle every sprint by chronicling events of their sprints in news print format themed around Betsy, astutely weaving their sprint happenings with current affairs of the world at large. Hear are a few examples,
. The team ScrumMaster, Stan’s favorite is this one where Betsy takes to skies. 
. The entire success with scrum is really due to his efforts and leadership. He has been very open minded and very smart, to let the team run with Betsy and see how it would play out with the team and the rest of the organization. Its one thing to float an idea, and quite another to really figure out what is going to work, and what might not be a good idea to fit in with the bigger picture.
This approach at recording sprint facts and events is sooo innovative/cool/awesome that my team used this technique to do our sprint retrospective. During our retrospective we formed pairs and spent 30 minutes each to create our own version of scrum times. After that we shared our impressions of the sprint via the news-prints that we had created. It was a fun exercise and the discussions were so much richer as each pair accentuated aspects of sprint dearer to them.
There are many other things that directly or indectly relate to saving Betsy.The thing I find most interesting is the emergence of a unique and compelling purpose within this team. It enables them to innovate in all areas: people, process, tools, software delivery. To sum it up in the words of Paul Opryszek
Betsy was born in rustic King county in mid 2008. Her dairy farmer was Paul Opryszek who was fortuitously struck by a bolt of Agile lightening that restored Vision as well as Belief in Truth, Beauty, and Resource Allocation sanity
