Unprepared for Conversations

Managers have many concerns, including delivery, predictability, profit, and budgets. They don’t actually care about sprints, retrospectives, story points, or any of the day-to-day minutiae of Scrum. This can lead to a serious disconnect between managers and Scrum teams. The dialogue at the beginning of this chapter is typical of how many initial conversations about Scrum play out: The Scrum master is focused on Scrum and the manager is trying to figure out how they fit into this new set of rules.

As a servant leader working with managers who are new to Scrum, you must put aside all of the things you want to promote and discuss, and instead figure out what management needs from you. This will help you foster constructive relationships with the managers you serve. Here’s a real-life example of what can happen when you don’t take your manager’s needs into account:

Boss:

Alright, Ryan, how do you think our planning and budgeting meeting with the product owner and finance went?

Ryan:

Painfully. I thought the product owner and I had created a good plan heading into it, but it just got destroyed.

Boss:

The plan isn’t the problem. The plan is fine. You came in here lite.

Ryan:

“Lite”?

Boss:

You couldn’t answer basic questions about the things that are most important to me: schedule, cost, and scope.

Ryan:

But those things aren’t critical to the Scrum team.

Boss:

You weren’t meeting with the Scrum team. You need to think beyond your team.

This conversation had a big impact on Ryan. His boss was right. Ryan had been completely unprepared. He hadn’t considered what his boss and the folks in finance needed from him in order to feel comfortable with the project they were about to start. As a consequence, Ryan couldn’t answer questions about project’s schedule, scope, and budget, which led to many more questions from his boss. The moral of this story: Servant leaders serve, they don’t push their own agendas.

So what do you do if you’ve noticed that you and your manager(s) seem to be focusing on different things and not connecting well when discussing projects? Look at your calendar and find your next meeting with your manager or with the leadership team related to the project your Scrum team is currently working on. Think about what those managers will want from you during the meeting. If you’re unsure, ask. Seriously, go and talk with them and ask what they’ll need from you.

Once you know what they expect, create a plan for yourself that includes answers to the following questions:

• What do the managers want to get from this meeting?

• How will I contribute to this outcome?

• Which Scrum practices can I leverage to achieve this outcome while still honoring management’s needs?

• What data do I need to fulfill my role at the meeting?

• How will I know I was successful?

This kind of preparation goes a long way. By being a partner with management, you can increase trust between your Scrum team and the wider organization. Trust makes our lives easier. And empiricism (which is at the core of Scrum) can only thrive in environments where people trust each other.