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Succeeding in a Scrum Master interview is as much about telling people what they want to hear as it is about telling them what they need to hear. It might seem crazy that in an interview you might suggest practices or solutions that you don't really agree with, but honestly, that's part of the job too. Now to be clear, this doesn't mean you should lie, placate or be a sycophant. Don't just be the pRaGmAtIsT who ejects your principles so you can avoid conflict with the people in power. But you have to be able to use those principles to meet people where they are, and help them take a small step in the right direction. If they're using story points to plan a fixed velocity, getting them instead to use relative sizing to have better breakdown conversations is a win, even if we'd rather avoid story points entirely. If they are currently working on a massive backlog full of noise, getting them just to add a single clear product goal is a win, even if we wish we could nuke the backlog and start again. Direction, not perfection, is the key to being successful.

"I find that a ducks opinion of me is greatly influenced by whether or not I have bread" - Mitch Hedberg Don't confuse attention with respect. You have to figure out how to identify the people that truly value your input. Otherwise, you risk letting your creative energy be wasted on hungry ducks. Also, thanks to Stephen Watson for reminding me of the insights of Mitch Hedberg (and using comedy quotes to pretend that you're profound)

"This, I believe, speaks to the fundamental problem with modern consulting and coaching practices. Most of our methods are still assuming we are helping organisations to ‘bring in’ patterns of success, be they frameworks, tools or methods, as though we are starting from point 1. The reality is much harder. Most organisations have already encountered these concepts, perhaps tried to implement them, and often have slid backwards, entrenching an anti-pattern that causes a great deal of dysfunction. What’s worse, is that we rarely recognise this to be true. Since time has passed and our practices have been embedded, we believe we are mature. The idea of going backwards probably never occurred to us." My full article on 'Anti-maturity' is up, and is also my first post on substack. Be sure to follow me over there if you want to keep up with my content, as it will become my focus as I move away from LinkedIn.

Last week I posted about 'Anti-Maturity' as a problem in modern organisations, and I've been continuing to flesh out this idea because I think it has strong explanatory power. Here is a draft of a visual 'anti-maturity model' that describes how progress can be made from a start point of a given pattern that you have little understanding of. If we use Scrum as an example of a pattern (really its a set of patterns, but the point is the same): It's possible to start from Zero, and understand the principles and practices of scrum. A good understanding of either of these can lead to success, but both leads to mastery. That is nothing new. The part I'm trying to explore here is the possibility you can go 'backwards'. By not understanding either principle or practice, you can end up in a situation where the pattern becomes an anti-pattern. It leads to more pain than it does value, and you start to entrench a flawed understanding of how the pattern is meant to serve you. The important thing to note here is that as you slide backward into anti-maturity, the energy cost of getting back to maturity is HIGHER than if you were starting from zero. This is the reality of many modern organizations that we aren't properly accounting for. We still use methods and tools build to help people start using patterns like Scrum, when the reality is they have an entrenched misunderstanding that gives a false sense of maturity. Teams and organizations to the left of this model often THINK they are to the right, because they are not at the 'start point' of knowing nothing. So the methods we use to help these organisations has to be fundamentally different from just teaching the pattern. It's about addressing and undoing the bad practice that has already taken hold. this is why I am so passionate about #DysfunctionMapping. I believe this is a more useful way to help organisations who are on the left side of this model, helping to identify and resolve anti-patterns BEFORE trying to implement patterns that people believe they have already mastered. I truly believe this is the future of "Agile" ways of working. Not implementing frameworks, but helping to solve problems with the poorly implemented frameworks that came before.

I hate "Psychological Safety". No, not the concept. Just the phrase. I didn't used to hate it. I've spent a lot of my career talking about it, teaching it, and trying to cultivate it. But in the last few years, It's become one of the most dangerous "anti-truths" that you see floating around in organizations. You know what I mean. Something we claim to be true, over and over again, but everyone knows it isn't. Let me give you an example; An organization says it cares about psychological safety. In meetings, they tell people it's a safe environment, and to be honest. But when someone is honest about how unrealistic our plans are, they get put on a performance improvement plan. Or when we tell people to be open about their skills and experience, so we can give them a safe place to grow. And then we use that information to lay people off who don't fit some opaque standards. Or how about this one; Running a workshop on psychological safety, asking teams to talk about how safe they feel to share with each other. Then we use the data to compare teams 'maturity' so that managers can make external judgements about the teams culture. All of these are real examples I've seen, in organizations that claim to have a culture of psychological safety. And you know what I've come to learn? If you have to talk about psychological safety, that means you don't have it.

Why is the Daily Scrum so hard to get right? I've seen and been a part of literally thousands of Daily Scrums over my career. I can count on one hand the number of teams who actually had a 'real' Daily Scrum when I've first joined them. A Daily scrum is NOT A Status update A place to show how busy you are. The only time developers talk to each other A place to tell non-developers what's going on. A place that everyone should 'get a turn to speak' A place for your Scrum Master or PO to feel included. A Daily Scrum *should* be: A planning session Focused on the sprint goal For the developers in the team About the work for the next 24 hours A place to identify collaboration opportunities This stuff probably sounds simple, but a *good* Daily Scrum is exceptionally rare. I believe this doesn't actually have anything to do with the Daily itself. It's a symptom of a deeper problem; A lack of ongoing collaboration. When you don't spend a enough time as a team understanding the work, when you work in Silos, your daily naturally becomes a place to provide a status update. But if you default to pairing. If you communicate constantly throughout the day. If everyone understands how their work ties to the sprint goal, and to the rest of the team.. Well, status updates become meaningless. So, if your Daily Scrum feels a bit crap, don't think about how to change your Daily Scrum. Think about how to improve team collaboration, and see if your Daily changes as a result.