The Development Team Must Be a Shark

The development team is like a shark.

As a boy, I thought sharks were the coolest creatures alive.  They were ultimate predators who created panic at beaches across the nation.  Steven Spielberg made one of the biggest movies of all time featuring a shark.  Sharks were a staple on public television, and today we can enjoy an entire week of shark programming on Discovery.  The more I have learned about sharks the more I respected and admired them.  As a scrum master, I have used sharks as a metaphor for the operation of a good scrum team.

A shark is a living fossil.  It has not evolved substantially in 200 million years.  When you are the top predator in the ocean natural selection is not a powerful influence.  It does give a shark several disadvantages.  The brain of a shark is smaller than the brain of a dog.  Sharks do not breed quickly, and the creatures plunge into irrational frenzies with the presence of blood and prey.

The biggest disadvantage sharks possess they have primitive gills.  Unless a shark is swimming with its mouth open, it cannot breathe.  It is a significant disadvantage because most fish today have gills which can filter oxygen out of the water without swimming.  Thus, a shark is doomed to swim from the moment of its birth.  A shark must swim, or it dies.

Software development teams should use the shark as a metaphor for how they should operate. Organizations need to keep swimming and moving forward.  A team needs to gain new knowledge and techniques continually.  A team has to deliver software regularly.  A team has to respond to a changing environment.  A team must keep swimming forward.

As a scrum master, it is up to you to keep the team swimming.  You need to ask compelling questions.  You must insist on delivering software into production at regular intervals.  Finally, a scrum master should encourage the team to pursue “Healthy Ownership,” with collective responsibility of outcomes.

If you cannot inspire the team in this fashion, you will have a drowning shark, and you will be dead in the water.

Until next time.