The Anxiety and Instability of Professional Life

The professional world is brimming with instability. Some days, you are riding high on waves of success, and then it comes crashing into the shore, providing a harsh reality. It forces you to be humble because you become careless when you feel comfortable. The global economy is in a weird place, motivated by a tremendous sense of anxiety. The sizeable centralized nature of many organizations causes part of this anxiety. Today, I want to discuss it. 

Two of the most influential trends in the business world were ideological. The first came from the University of Chicago School of Economics and Professor Milton Freedman. The professor argued that the primary purpose of any business is to generate profits for its investors. Competing interests like employees and consumers were secondary in Freedman's view. The investors who put money at risk for the company should receive the lion's share of the wealth because they face the most risk. The shareholder theory of capitalism spread like wildfire through the business community. To drive profits, business people slashed headcounts at companies, squeezed salaries, and profit to shareholders became the only thing that mattered. Any other considerations would suffer. 

The other came from executive Jack Welch, who transformed General Electric into a corporate juggernaut. Instead of growing the business with better products, Welch grew G.E. through a ruthless combination of acquisitions and job cutting. Soon, G.E. resembled a giant unregulated bank, with shareholders keeping the party rolling as long as the dividend checks kept coming. When Welch retired, G.E. was a symbolic tower of beer coasters at the end of a bar that any mischievous patron could topple at any time. It is what happened as debts came due and the economy changed. Today, G.E. is a shell of its former self, divided into three smaller companies focused on building things instead of juicing share prices. 

Friedman and Welch have one thing in common: their belief that the people who did the work were expenses to be managed instead of people who created value for the business and its investors. It made a wave of downsizing in the business world, and departments shrank. The mantra among business professionals was to create lean organizations. 

The rise of computers and photocopiers slashed the clerical staffing at an organization. A professional had to advance into management to advance a career instead of earning tenure in your position. The situation resembled the book "Lord of the Flies," where to get ahead, you had to be hypercompetitive and jerk to your peers instead of working together. Numerous business cultures get caught up in this cycle of psychological violence and dysfunction until they ignore their core business and customers. I have experienced this firsthand, and it isn't pleasant.

The trend has plenty of names, like rightsizing, flattening the organization, and downsizing, but the impact is the same: fewer people doing more work. It has created a paradox in the business world because everyone is so busy that numerous choke points now exist, and work needs to be done promptly. Doing less with more is creating longer cycle times and more frustration. It also hurts workers who sacrifice mental health and family time to meet increasingly tricky corporate goals. 

The Agile reformation addresses the bottlenecks and frustrations of the corporate world. Still, business leaders who continue to treat employees like cost centers instead of people who deliver value are the principal obstacle to helping improve business culture. I look forward to the business community giving these individuals their comeuppance. 

Until then, I will keep working to make the business community more sustainable, sane, and satisfying. I hope you are along for the ride.

Until next time.

Burnout and the Technology Professional

Static, distraction, and stress are present in the lives of technology professionals. To stay relevant in the industry, you are active in internet culture, learning about new technologies and ways of doing things. This dynamic online lifestyle feels like staring at a disconnected television with its black-and-white static pattern. At the same time, you need to concentrate on getting work done while forces outside your control view for your attention. Meetings with senior leadership, instant messages from Slack, and even the dog wanting a walk interrupting our need to concentrate on the task are the battles we face with distraction. Finally, deadlines are cruel in the business world, and there are never enough people to do the job correctly. It creates a level of stress which do not exist in other professions. Combined static, distraction, and stress are adequate conditions to lead to professional burnout, and I would like to discuss that today. 

Global business culture makes it challenging to cover the topic of leadership burnout because it focuses on strength, competence, and confidence. Failure is for the sick and lazy. If you are not succeeding in business, you are not working hard or talented enough. The business press amplifies this attitude and the information ecosystem that thrives around it. Turn on Fox Business News or CNBC and watch it for any length of time, and you will notice that it resembles sports programming with winners, losers, human interest stories, and scores rolling by in the form of stock prices. Executives parade on the screen like celebrities, and nothing is worse than a network anchor pointing out less-than-expected revenue figures. 

The business world is about triumph, wealth, and success, but the business press often ignores the lonely wilderness that leads to that success. It is late nights, missing time with family, red-eye flights to meet clients, and dealing with sef-important jerks who often pay the bills. It is a world of rejection and loneliness where you can hustle for forty years and have nothing to show for the struggle. Talk to any business professional; they will have stories about their sacrifices to stay relevant and employed in this ruthless environment. 

It is why two recent blog posts from people I know and respect inspired me to consider my professional burnout and direction. Alan Dayley is an Agile coach and instructor whom I met on the old Google+ social media platform. He was talking about leading a training session with a group of executives, and a director of engineering boasted, "Engineers are like batteries. When they are exhausted, I replace them." Without skipping a beat, Alan said, "Then I am glad I don't work for you," before continuing the training. I am sure he did not receive an invitation to do another training with that client because he spoke truth to power at that moment. When leaders see human beings as expendable and replaceable, we have moments like that with Alan Dayley.  He was invited back to do more training for the client company. The executive with the "just replace them" attitude was from a partner company working with the client. The director sponsor of the training supported Daily in that situation.*   The attitudes of some leaders explain why burnout is so common in the professional ranks. 

Another person I respect, Angela Dugan, suffered a health scare while in the middle of being acquired by another company. She asked for time off to recover and was told no. Fortunately, she had the option to quit to focus on her health. She calls this intermission in her career her "sabbatical," and she uses it to refresh and recover. I have known Angela for over fifteen years, and she is a competent, empathetic, and results-oriented leader from experience. This reality did not matter to her new bosses when she asked for time off when her body and mind began to break down from the responsibilities of leading technology professionals during a pandemic and acquisition. 

These stories could make you cynical and jaded about the technology business, but I see it differently. People like Angela, Alan, and myself are out in the business world fighting the lonely fight of making business better, one project and person at a time. We sacrifice our youth and sometimes our health to provide for our families and improve the world. It is not a heroic life like the one popularized by the business press but one we should respect in our everyday work experience. 

I suffer from burnout from time to time. Unfortunately, I must muddle through the experience to support myself and my family. It is not fun, but I have come out of the experience stronger and wiser. Others are not so lucky, as they have suffered from heart disease, addiction, and mental health breakdowns. Businesses have gotten so big that they neglect that it is people who keep the global economy spinning. 

I wish I had easy recipes to avoid burnout. I do not. Instead, I have a few strategies to keep it at bay. First, I try to get a healthy amount of sleep. Sleep deprivation has the same effect as intoxication, so getting sleep is an intelligent way to approach work. Next, practice moderation with food and alcohol. I used both to help me cope with stress, and all it did was make me fat and miserable. Drink a glass of wine or a Negroni occasionally, but remember that most of life's problems will not be solved at the bottom of a glass. Often, new issues will appear. Finally, step away from work. Set firm boundaries and avoid answering e-mails during time off. Enjoy the company of your significant other and children. Go to a concert or dance the night away with friends, but do something, anything not related to the office. 

Burnout is real. A combination of perverse incentives and unhealthy expectations causes it. We must admit that it happens and that even the best people suffer. In an environment of static, distraction, and stress, it is surprising it does not occur more often.

Until next time. 

*Correction -  Alan Daily provided an updated account, reflected in the blog today, 6-September-2023.

Agile Cultivates Success

Software development is a strange world of science, technology, commerce, and deadlines.  Presently, the people who keep these robust systems working represent less than one-hundredth of one percent of the total world’s population.  It means we have more work than people who can do it.  The Wall Street Journal notes that it is creating weird situations in the job market and business community.  Leadership must change to meet this new reality.  I knew over ten years ago that the current path would not be sustainable and joined the agile reformation.  It was a strange decision, but it makes sense because changing the world requires traveling differently.

The online comic “The Oatmeal” has a fantastic cartoon about high school and popularity.  We sort young people into so many categories.  Elite academic and athletic starts float above the student body.  What remains are masses of students attempting to get by and find a niche in life.  Among their ranks are the hard rock kids trying to escape with music and drugs and striving theater kinds and band members using performance as a path forward in their lives.  Finally, there are meek and unknown people looking to find anything which might provide purpose and direction to their lives.  

The upper crust of sports and academics occupy leadership roles in many schools.  Teachers and administrators find these individuals and provide them a path to college.  I was lucky and singled out in this fashion, but not fitting in gave me a different perspective and approach to leadership.  High school became a fertile soil to grow a personality.  

I would spend college learning to run a newsroom, work at a radio station, and interact with very different people.  The time I spent preparing for a career showed me how to retrain myself when economic and personal conditions change.  Funnily, my exposure to liberal arts and media made me more adaptive to the peaks and valleys of a modern economy.  

Businesses need strange, creative, and resilient people to lead change.  More than ever, to solve complicated problems, we need individuals who see things differently. These personalities look at issues and try outrageous approaches to solving these problems: more freaks and geeks calling the shots and fewer prom queens and homecoming kings.  

I am very proud that the agile movement has these eccentric characters.  People who are attempting to improve diversity among the ranks of developers.  Project people who understand that nine women cannot create a baby in one month and leaders that get their hands dirty with the teams doing the work instead of giving orders with no grounding in reality.  Each day, they are attempting to rebuild trust in the business world.  It is a struggle, sacrifice, and frustration.  Nothing worth doing is easy.  

It is why you need to look for those people who don’t fit in and give them some room to make a difference.  Instead of promoting a rising star, make them a scrum master and work across the organization building teams and clearing impediments.  When you promote these individuals, they will be better equipped to lead others because, as scrum masters, they must lead without any authority.  Teaching people to lead without authority is going to be an essential skill in business.  Many problems today require collaboration and systems thinking instead of power and hierarchy.  It is why traditional paths of leadership and looking increasingly obsolete.  

As a business person, success depends on looking at problems from a different perspective.  Organizations decouple leadership from authority.   Finally, collaboration is essential to solve business problems.  To find people who excel in these areas, you should direct your attention to the fertile soil of the agile movement and the colorful characters who make it unique.  

Until next time. 

 

Emotions are Intentional on Your Agile Team

Existential thinkers have plenty to say about emotions.

I have been busy working on a large project.  My life has become a dull whirlwind of train rides, conference calls, and e-mail chains, which never end.  The days tick by as we draw closer to our deadline.  Everyone is feeling the pressure.  As the scrum master and coach, I have to maintain a semblance of grace under pressure.  If I do not the team will continue to careen out of control, and the project will fail.  I have talked about emotions plenty of times on this blog.  Today, I want to discuss the intentionality of emotions and what it means for your teams.

I have been reading plenty of philosophy books on the train, and I have become intrigued with post-modern and existential philosophy.  In particular, the trio of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus.  Two of these writers earned the Nobel Prize in literature.  The third gave birth to contemporary feminist thought.  The three of them survived the horrors of the great depression and the Second World War.  In the aftermath, they were authoring a philosophy centered on individuals and the life choices they make.  Instead of grand narratives of history like Marx or Hegel, existential thinkers wrote about freedom and opportunity.  The existentialists spend time discussing psychology.  Each of them pushes back against the leading theories of psychoanalysis and attempt to provide a better way to discuss emotions.

As psychoanalysis grew in popularity and respectability, people began to accept many of its presumptions about human nature.  A central hypothesis was the concept of the “unconscious mind.”  The unconscious was a mental black box where we kept our repressed memories, emotions and irrational portions of ourselves.  Therapy could help us unlock some of the mysteries of the unconscious, but it would never be able to untangle the numerous tangled threads of repression, trauma, anxiety, and emotion each of us possesses.  If someone was easily angered the psychoanalysis would say there was nothing to be done because emotions are part of the unconscious mind and it will require extensive therapy to address the complicated issues causing the anger.

Existential thinkers reject this extreme version of the unconscious mind. To an existentialist, humans do have a conscious mind and an unconscious mind, but the unconscious is not a black box that cannot be understood.  Instead, the unconscious mind contains emotions, memories and hidden elements of behavior but instead of them obeying irrational processes they are rational and intentional depending outside stimulus.

For example, you are in a retrospective, and some stories did not get completed.  The inability to get work done becomes the main topic of the retrospective.  Two developers are upset by the discussion.  An existentialist would say this is natural because the two developers did or did not do something which caused the sprint to fail.  The feeling of anger, disappointment, or anxiety is a logical and rational response to failure.  If you are a good enough coach or scrum master the team should be able to express those emotions healthily.  One developer should be able to admit they are struggling writing automated tests.  The other developer should be able to confess that they do not have time to help the other developer improve their testing skills.  In a condition of psychological safety and openness, the team can work out how they can avoid failure like this in the future.

The scrum master should ask “What” style questions instead of “Why” centered questions.  When someone is angry, ask, “What is making you feel this way.”  It is less judgmental than asking why.  Ask people what they are going to do to change and what they can do when they feel angry or upset.  It is not easy, but it guides you and the people on your team to take ownership of emotional behavior.  It means that emotions are still irrational and exhausting, but the reasons we have them are not.  To the existentialist, a feeling serves a real need in each human.

As a scrum master and coach, it is up to you to understand emotions and how they are natural and rational responses to real situations.  It is up to you to ask questions about what is triggering emotions instead of why emotions are triggered.  Finally, a coach or scrum master needs to help others take ownership of emotions instead of dismissing them because emotions affect the team and the individual struggling to express them.

Until next time.

Self-Organization Works If You Let It.

Teams cannot be assembled like Lego bricks.

I spend much of my time working with agile teams.  A big challenge is often these people are thrown together and forced to behave as a “team.”  The self-organizing team is one of the most critical pieces of an agile project, and it is one of the hardest things to create.  I wanted to spend some time discussing why building teams is so difficult.

In most business environments, a team is formed by hiring consultants and putting them together with existing employees.  The team is broken up, and the consultants are laid off or moved to a different project when work is complete.  The approach from an accounting perspective might make sense, but it creates plenty of unnecessary work.  Teams are continually going through Tuckman’s stages of group development and are in the “storming” stage of team maturity.  In a more agile environment, work comes to teams, and then the teams do the job.  The group moves on to a different project when they finish work.

According to the Harvard Business review teams which stick together have a 19% decrease in defects and 30% decrease in budget deviations.  The bottom line is that spinning up units and disbanding them is a foolish use of company money.  So what makes the team self-organizing?  Yvette Francino has an excellent blog on the subject.  In short, teams which self-organize have a few properties:

1. They hold themselves accountable for success and failure.
2. They healthily handle conflict.
3. They have a common goal which they strive to achieve.
4. They have a standard way of working.
5. Finally, they have stable membership.

These traits make an excellent self-organizing team, and it is up to agile coaches and scrum masters to hold them accountable.  Notice that these requirements do not mention test-driven development, SOLID Development, or other technical paradigms.  Most of these skills are soft skills.  It means that a team needs to learn how to work together outside of the technical skills, and this is difficult.  People have egos and subtle hierarchies of expertise and authority.  Add to the mix unrealistic deadline pressure and micromanagement from outside leadership, and you corrupt the five characteristics of self-organization.

So look toward creating more functional teams and allow upper management to understand how they are more successful.

Until next time.

The Strength of Technology Pros

No rest for technology

Technology is not for the meek.  A software developer is relearning their craft every 18 months.  Technology companies come and go with regularity.  Businesses rely on software to remain profitable and when the software does not work it costs lives.  The men and women who work in this business have to be tough.  Part of that toughness is the realization you have to deal with failure and frustration.  This week on the blog, I will discuss these central conditions of technology.

Many people have romantic notions about scientists, engineers, and software professionals.  The stereotype is that we are super smart and socially awkward individuals who spend their days making inventions and applications which change the world.  The reality of technology is less glamorous; it is hours, weeks, and months of frustration.  It is executives and financers demanding the work to be finished immediately.  It is cold coffee and stale pizza.  It is loneliness and frustration.  In the end, you might have a brief moment which feels like the creator is touching your shoulder but those moments are rare.  Often you will see a solution to a problem which has dominated your life and now you will have to make it work for others.

It means traditional methods cannot measure these workers.  Science is notoriously fickle when it comes to new advancements.  Computer software is a handmade and messy process prone to error and cost overruns.  Software is eating the world, but it depends on a small segment of the world population to build it.  Innovation and invention do not fit neatly into a project plan.  The realities and pressures of technology create unhealthy levels of stress.

The heavy intellectual lifting combined with the anxiety caused by deadline pressure creates a toxic stew of emotions which can lead to physical problems.  Obesity and heart disease are common among software professionals.  Self-medication with cannabis and alcohol are also common within the trade.  All of my contemporaries have recounted stores of insomnia and anxiousness caused by grappling with a severe challenge.  For those outside the profession, the levels of stress and frustration are extreme.  To a developer, it is just another day at the office.

Creativity and innovation are difficult.  The pressure we place on people leading innovation efforts is unhealthy.  The repercussions are professional burn out, defective products, and the risk of cascading failure within complex systems which maintain the global economy.  In many respects, we live in a magical age.  Today’s smartphones are more powerful than the computers which put people on the moon.  With a few swipes, we can order food and find a possible romantic partner to share it with us.  Information can swirl around the globe in seconds and we have millions of people using the internet to solve problems only a century ago would have had the attention of a small group of specialists.  It is a fantastic period to be alive, but the cost is that many people take for granted these advances and forget they are the product of the human mind rather than magic.

It is why I say technology is not for the meek. It requires intelligence, training, and the ability to tolerate frustration and failure.  The strength has helped build the global economy, and I have enjoyed a peripheral role in this process.  Technology people are different, but they have to be; otherwise, the magical world we live in would not exist.

Until next time.

Transform at the speed of the Team

Coaching is more than presentations.

Software development is not rocket science; it is a branch of engineering but, it is not rocket science.  I say that because rocker science depends on the laws of chemistry and physics which have not changed since the big bang.  Software development is changing daily.  Javascript libraries are constantly being updated and going in and out of fashion.  Versions of PHP change and open source code is in constant flux.  Finally, software development is dependent on the fickle demands of consumers who use it.  The level of chaos and change are staggering.  It is why software development is such a challenging profession.  As a scrum master and coach, you must understand those challenges and guide development teams through the process.

One of my favorite pieces of journalism is Bloomberg’s weighty essay entitled “What is Code?” It talks about the person in the taupe blazer and the frustrations of software developers.  It also does a great job talking about the headaches the executives who manage software developer face.  The essay captures perfectly how smart people struggle daily to get dumb machines to act intelligently.

The world of software has tremendous power, but that power belongs in a small subset of the world population.  I calculated that less than .05% of the global population of 7.4 billion could maintain software and computer networks.  Many of these individuals work in the quiet recesses of government and business keeping things running.  They go home to families and friends.  They pay bills and try to live their lives as best they can.

Because of the laws of supply and demand, computer professionals receive large compensation, but the compensation comes with a trade-off.  The trade-off is long hours on uncompensated overtime and business leaders expecting them to perform magic.  It creates conditions which lead to poor quality and burn out.  I have experienced this situation as a developer and as a manager.  As a customer, I have stumbled on numerous situations where fatigue, complexity, and unrealistic expectations have combined into a poor product.  The history of the internet contains plenty of companies which had a few pixels and an unhealthy dose of hype.

Technology professionals have lived in that world since the early 1990s, and you can excuse them for being suspicious of new approaches to doing things.  For every Amazon.com there are hundreds of companies like Pets.com.  So bringing ideas like Test Driven Development, S.O.L.I.D. programming and Agile is going to face resistance.  As a scrum master or coach, I recommend you begin slowly introducing concepts letting people test out an idea to get comfortable with them.  It also helps if you understand and recognize the pressures the team faces.  Are they distracted by requests which are urgent but not important?  Do you have a healthy cadre of product owners or is the role being performed by a manager?  Finally, are they working with a brittle technology stack? Answering those questions will determine how fast you can go during your agile transformation.

Software development is not rocket science.  It is a challenging field prone to error and burn-out.  Only by paying attention to individual challenges each software development team faces can they be coached into an agile way of doing things.

The Art and Science of Getting Stuff Done.

If it was easy we would figure out how to automate it.

It feels good to be back.  I left my old firm and joined a new organization.  I took the week off to get accustomed to my new surroundings and sleep schedule.  I also had a holiday week, so I used the opportunity to catch up with family and friends.  Now that I am getting comfortable with my new role, I wanted to talk about the biggest challenge we face in agile and scrum.

The creation of software is one of the few modern products we produce which is nearly impossible to automate.  We have figured out how to automate plenty of things related to software development.  Testing can be automated.  DevOps demands the software building process to be automated.  Anything which is repetitive and tedious can be automated.  Writing software requires plenty of skill and practice to do it well.  Someone needs to take the vague ideas of the business and turn them into something concrete so that the software developers can create something valuable.

It means authoring software is a human process.  Human beings are notoriously messy and prone to error.  If you accept the reality of human messiness, it is easy to understand why projects fail and work does not get done.  A colleague of mine put it best when he said, “It all comes down to people, you can have the best process, but if the people can’t or won’t do it you are lost.”

Specialized professionals have come into being to help make sure the organizations keep going and the processes work.  These people have plenty of different titles and roles.  These people are scrum masters, project managers, and bosses of every conceivable size and strip.  What united them all is they need to be good with people and have strong leadership skills.

The good news is there are plenty of good programs which teach leadership skills.  Combined with practice and desire; anyone can become a competent leader.  Thanks to the Agile Alliance and the Scrum Alliance, we can train skilled people to become Product Owners and Scrum Masters.  These courses and training programs represent the science of project management.  The art combines the technical aspects of scrum mastery and putting it together with the messy nature of human beings to create something new.  It is not easy, and it is emotionally draining.  If done right, it can generate millions of dollars in value.  If done poorly, it resembles a tragically executed piece of performance art.

So leading projects is both an art and a science.  The science understands the things like testing paradigms and the art enters the picture where you have someone with gout working late hours and not getting the work done.  It is not easy to be nothing worthwhile is easy.  So remember the art and science related to your role.  You are going to need both.

Until next time.

This reformation may take a while

Progress takes time.
  Image courtesy of Pawel Jonca.

The history of progress and social change is rocky.  The first feminists from the Seneca Falls convention did not live to see the passage of the women’s suffrage.  Women would continue to struggle for equal rights and acceptance outside the home and today women in technology face the soft misanthropy of “Brogramer” culture.  It is discouraging that each step forward leads to another pushback from people who feel threatened by that change.  It has been on my mind as I see businesses struggle with accepting the agile reformation sweeping business. 

Like many technology professionals, I receive e-mail messages daily from recruiters.   These individuals want me to sell my home and relocate to remote parts of the country for six to twelve-month contracts.  I ignore these messages politely or reply that I am not interested in relocation.  This week I receive a notice for a “scrum-project manager.”  I was intrigued.  I glanced at the requirements, and this is what I found. 

• Two to three years’ experience in SCRUM
• Two to three years’ experience as a BA/Project manager.
• One or more years of Experience in JIRA.
• Great Communicator.
• Organized.
• Salary 50k to 75K

I did a double take and then attempted to unpack this request.  According to the Scrum guide, there are only three roles; developers, a product owner, and scrum master.  There is no mention of a project manager.  Agile and Scrum according to the manifesto put, “Individuals and interactions over process and tools.”  I appreciate the author of the job post understands that communication skills and organization are not optional for a scrum master.  Finally, the salary requirements are laughable and way below the $100,000 national median compensation stated in LinkedIn.  For a company attempting to adopt agile, this is not a credible offer.

The person who wrote this job requirement should be embarrassed.  The salary is in the lowest percentile quarter of prevailing wages.  The author does not understand the role of a scrum master, and they confuse agile experience with project management.  Anyone who is thinking about this role should reconsider.  It will stunt your career growth, and the company appears to be paying lip service to Agile.

It is my hope businesses will do a better job writing these requirements and recruiting proper agile talent.  Unfortunately, this means executives and human resources professionals still have a long way to go before they understand agile and what it takes to be a twenty-first-century company.  Just like the feminists of Seneca Falls, after seeing job requirements like this, I am afraid that I may not live to see that change.

Until next time.

Watching the changes roll by

Heraclitus would be pleased

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus has a special place in my heart.  He was one of the first thinkers to observe the importance of change, and he coined a slogan which business people use each day.  Heraclitus said, “The only constant in nature is change.” This maxim in philosophy and business got a bit of a work out this week as the Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org announced two new training programs.  This week, I would like to talk about these new programs.

Scrum.org announced a new class and certification called Professional Scrum with Kanban.  My initial reaction was skepticism.  Kanban is widely discussed among agile practitioners and understanding how to do it properly is part of learning Scaled Agile Framework for Enterprise (SAFe).  I was confused.  With this wealth of information, why would anyone want or need a class on Kanban and scrum?  It occurred to me people learn in different ways.  Some individuals can handle self-directed learning on Kanban.  Other people, will benefit from classroom training and the guidance of an experienced trainer.  So, a course on Scrum and Kanban is not so strange or confusing. 

The next big news in the agile world is the scrum alliance announcing the Advanced Certified Scrum Master and the Advanced Certified Product Owner credential.  I was much less skeptical about this news.   I worked as an agile developer for four years before becoming a certified scrum master.  The credential gave me instant credibility with hiring professionals and with executive leadership.  What the training did not provide me were some of the soft skills I would need to be a more successful scrum master.  Abilities like active listening and creating a dialog with stakeholders were skills I would discover by trial and error.  The advanced program from the scrum alliance provides a solid background in the basics and the skills required to spread the use of agile to other parts of the business outside of technology.   As someone who has been a CSP for the last four years, I wish I had this training during the early portion of my career.  Now the scrum alliance is offering it, and it is a positive development for those who know the basics but wish to be more successful.

Any training and development from the agile community is a good thing for the people out in the field.  The sharing of knowledge and information between the different licensing bodies also creates a cross-pollination of ideas.  It prevents the practice of technology and project management from getting stagnant.  I use approaches from SAFe and scaling scrum with scrum side by side. I have to deal with waterfall budget processes and graft them to scrum teams.  Finally, I deal with business partners who think everything I do is magic.  I need all the training I can get to be successful and deal with those challenges.

Heraclitus was a teacher.  This founding father of change spent his time educating others about it.  If agile is to continue to grow and spread; its practitioners need more opportunities to improve their skills and gain knowledge.  It means these new courses are good news about the health of the Agile reformation.

Until next time.

The Social Compact of Agile

If you don't set priorities your office could be like this.
From the Iron Mitten web site.  

One of the biggest challenges in technology is there are not enough people to do all the necessary work.  Only about 18.5 million people in the world of 7.4 Billion people can maintain software and modern computer networks.  That means that less than .05% of the world have the skills to keep the global economy spinning. It would not happen without dedicated project professionals and smart technologists holding everything together.  Without prioritization, the gears of the industry would grind to a halt, and that is what I want to talk about this week.

When Thomas Hobbes wrote “The Leviathan,” in the aftermath of the English Civil War; he spoke about something called the social contract.  The social contract to Hobbes was an unwritten set of rules where individuals traded their liberty with the state in exchange for safety and protection.  Ignore the social contract, and society would collapse, and philosophers and social scientists still use the idea of a social contract to explain how communities work.

In the world of business, we also have social contracts.  People who have more authority have offices instead of cubicles, so they meet with people in private.  When it is time to distribute profits, shareholders receive preference over employees.  Finally, no one gives human resources any trouble because they have the authority to hire and fire anyone.  None of these rules are written down, but we all know they exist.

In agile, there is one social compact.  The product owner sets the priorities, and the development team says how long it is going to take to do the work.  The developers may disagree with the preferences, but they have to accept them.  The product owners may not like how long it will take to do the work, but they have to agree with them.  It is the trade-off which makes agile work.  If neither the developers nor the product owner respects this setup, then the implementation will fail.

It is well and good if you have only one project and one team.  What happens when you have multiple projects and not enough teams to do the work?  It is when prioritization becomes more critical.  Business leaders need to be part of the process, and they need to know what is being worked on and when.

There are plenty of processes to set priorities.  The most significant challenge for me is the mindset of the business of professionals.  Sales and marketing professionals are trained to think each “no” is one less objection to “yes.”  It is admirable for a sales professional; it is madness for a large organization as self-interested and selfish people scratch and claw to “yes.”  Projects hopscotch up and down in priority as developers struggle to stay ahead of the shifting needs of the organization.  Unclean code is released to production because someone needed a feature released “today.” I continue to struggle with this challenge.

So as a scrum master or agile coach, you need to enforce the social contract of agile.  That social contract is product owners set priorities and developers say how long it is going to take to do those priorities.  If you can do this, you just might succeed.

Until next time.

Experience Matters in a Scrum Coach

Leadership experience is not pretty but necessary

Plenty of issues crop up in the day to day life of a scrum master.  Impediments need to be resolved and each day you are a living example of how Scrum is supposed to work.  As a fellow coach, Ryan Ripley remarked on how some individuals with little experience with agile are marketing themselves as coaches.  Ryan feels pretty strongly about the subject, and so do I.

There are two lines of thought about leadership.  The first school is called the “great man theory.”  This school firmly believes that great leaders are not made but are born.  This notion has been used for generations to support monarchs and other forms of tyranny.  For each leader born into greatness, there are numerous counterexamples of individuals who fall woefully short.  There is also an elitism and snobbishness associated with this school of leadership which says that only specific groups can aspire to leadership.  I also find this type of thinking has plenty of sexist and racist baggage associated with it.

The second school of thought is the notion that leadership can be taught just like any other skill.  I am a firm supporter of this idea.  When I was a teenager, I benefited from leadership training from Boy Scouts of America and Marine Corps Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps.  I had the Boy Scout Law ingrained into my personality at an early age.  The outdoor activities forced me to learn to help younger scouts cope with being alone and away from home for the first time.  Being caught in a rainstorm surrounded by wet and tired twelve-year-olds is a good measure of your leadership skills.

Marine Corps JROTC taught me self-discipline, my left form my right and that leadership is more about credibility than shouting at people.  I met some remarkable people.  David Ogle was a survivor of combat around the Chosin reservoir and a USMC boxing champion.  He served in Vietnam and became a Sergeant Major.  Richard Weidner was a company commander in Vietnam and taught me about the less than glamorous things leaders have to do.

Together, Boy Scouts and Marine JROTC gave me a good foundation from which to build.  I took that knowledge with me into the sales profession, the casino business, radio, and finally into technology.  I am entering the fifth year of being a scrum master.  The experience of shipping software at the end of each sprint changes a person and their style of leadership.  Working with offshore teams changes how you relate to others.  Those experiences make you a better scrum master and coach.

We can teach leadership, in my opinion.  I also feel experience acts as a multiplier of leadership skill.  A good leader does not ask someone to do something which they would not do themselves.  That means if you ask a developer to write a unit test you better be willing to write a few of your own.  An agile coach who has not led a retrospective or shipped code is not a coach because they lack the practical skills to make agile successful.  They are faux coaches, and you should steer clear of them.  An agile transformation is like performing a heart transplant on a person running a marathon; you would not trust that job to a first-year medical student.  Anyone can call themselves a coach, it takes time and experience to be a valuable coach

Until next time.

Work should not make you crazy

Being an office worker feels this wrong and it
needs to change or the global economy is in trouble.

I have been a business professional for over twenty years.  I have witnessed the good, the bad and the ugly of what it means to be a professional.  I am well compensated for my work, but like many people today I live paycheck to paycheck.  I have endured three recessions in my lifetime each time suffering a personal of a financial setback.  I am pretty stoic about these experiences, but they continue having a lingering effect on the kind of leadership I practice.  This week I want to talk about an issue which is an unspoken problem in the business community – mental health.

I began thinking about this topic when news came out on Mashable about Madalyn Parker.  She sent an e-mail where she told her staff that she was taking two days off for mental health reasons.  Her letter was then followed up by a letter from the CEO thanking her for taking the time to focus on her health and wished her a swift recovery.  What followed was a flurry of articles and think pieces about mental illness in the work place.  I want to add my two cents to the conversation.

The world of the white collar professional is unforgiving, highly competitive, impersonal and unfair.  The global economy does not care about the individuals who keep it going.  The factory worker manufacturing smart phones in China, the developer working late nights building applications and the young person cultivating social media likes are all part of this ecosystem.  This environment is an ideal breeding ground for mental illness.  With 1 in 5 Americans who have a mental illness, and I consider addiction part of this statistic, there needs to be a discussion about mental health in the work place.

The reason I became an agile practitioner is as a software developer I labored in plenty of situations which were dysfunctional.  I swore there must be a better way if given a chance I would help lead the necessary changes.  My career is guided by that mission.  In that respect, I am similar to the muckrakers and union organizers of the late 19th century.  These people lobbied and organized to end child labor, reduce injuries in the workplace, and enforced fire safety in all factories.  Eventually, the government became involved, and O.S.H.A. was created to ensure the abuses of the past never happen again.

Just like we do not want to work in factories where the likelihood of amputation or death is high we should also demand offices which discourage mental illness.  Here are some of the long term trends I see which are promoting mental illness.

The use of alcohol and recreational drugs as a social lubricant in business. – 

As long as there has been an America, there has been alcohol.  The nation’s drinking problem became so bad that elected officials, wrongly, passed a constitutional amendment to ban the sale of alcohol entirely. When prohibition proved to be a failure, American returned to its drinking ways.  The real spike in alcohol abuse in this nation took place in the 1950’s and 1960’s.  “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” and the television show “Mad Men” chronical these boozy times.

Fifty years later, alcohol is the drug of choice in the media profession.  Client in all industries is being “entertained” with fine wine and cocktails.  Account executives and vendors are exchanging and consuming alcohol, and it is a regular business practice.   Professionals see this as early as college and discover the consumption of alcohol is a way to deal with stress.  Some of these professionals develop addictions problems, and these addiction problems spill over into the business.

Also, the use of cannabis among engineers has increased over the last fifty years as well as abuse of cocaine among executive ranks.  The reliance of both legal and illegal means to alter consciousness exacerbates existing mental health issues and hurts productivity.  The office should not be a gateway to addiction.

Sleep deprivation. –

Tight deadlines, outsourcing and the around the clock nature of the economy means that a professional to conduct their job has an irregular sleep schedule.  I have written about the importance of sleep in the past, and so has my friend Lawrence Gasik.  Research has shown that people who do not get enough sleep exhibit the traits of PTSD or alcohol intoxication.  There are international conference calls to take and offshore teams to consult.  Business leaders still expect meetings in the office take place during daylight hours, so those people working on these bifurcated sleep schedules suffer in silence.  It explains why sleep aids, melatonin, coffee and Five Hour Energy drinks sell so well in the United States.  We are attempting to whipsaw our bodies into sleep and wakefulness to accommodate the demands of the global economy. This type of sleep deprivation also undermines the mental health of employees.

The focus on shareholder values instead of customer value in large companies. –

Richard Eastman of the Kodak Company paid his employees above average rates, provided numerous perks for his employees and provided outstanding service.  He resisted unionization of his office and factory workers but always made sure his pay and benefit packages were always better than the current market.  With rising unionization of the work force, capital balanced the needs of customers, labor, and shareholders.

This trend began to change as future CEO Jack Welch gave a speech about “Shareholder Value,” to The Pierre in New York.  Combined with the Chicago school of Economics, led by Nobel laureate Milton Freedman business leaders began to worry more about share price than other aspects of the firm.  The effects have been remarkable.  Stock prices have increased for many companies, a particular segment of the investment class has gotten obscenely wealthy, and many mergers and acquisitions have happened to create massive economies of scale.  Shareholder value also lead to the Financial Crisis of 2008 popularized in “The Big Short,” the rise and fall of Enron, the skullduggery of RJR Nabisco and finally the destruction numerous corporate towns in middle America and popularized by the book “Glass House.”

There is plenty of pushback in the academic community against the shareholder value movement, but the business sector has not embraced it and still do not see employees as partners in success.

The inability for business to pay people their real labor value. –

Since the Presidency of George W. Bush and the bursting of the dot.com bubble, companies have gotten very good at creating what my friend Bob Karzeniowski calls the musical chairs economy.  Using slow growth as an excuses firms are demanding more experience from applicants and cutting back training opportunities.  People cannot get on the career ladder, and those that do often have limited chances for advancement.  I also should point out that recruiters and hiring managers openly discriminate against the unemployed people and those who are laid off.

The Great Recession of 2008 – 2009, created a glut of workers.  It has taken nine years, but now that the job market has tightened, business people have lost the “muscle memory,” to increase labor participation to meet the market demand.  We now have created perverse incentives such as airlines having to cancel flights because there are not enough pilots.  Low wages, the musical chairs job market, and the mental scars of the great recession create insecurity.  This instability leads to the undermining of self-esteem and mental illness issues.

The promotions of people with psychopathic tendencies into executive leadership roles.  –

Over the last 40 years, we have been promoting the wrong people into business leadership roles.  Many of these people support the short sided notion of increasing shareholder value.  Making matters worse is some of them are psychopathic who find emotional fulfillment by playing people off each other.  Instead of nurturing others and guiding the business, these leaders create a toxic stew of dysfunction.

It is even more pernicious because these leaders become celebrities in the corporate world and media.  Finally, psychopaths are emotional chameleons kissing up and kicking down to advance their careers.  These emotional vampires undermine morale, and the mind games threaten mental health.

Finally, social stigma against people with mental illness means people who should get help do not. –

Numerous studies have shown the stigma of mental illness is the principle reason people do not get treatment.  This stigma is amplified in the business world where mental toughness and grit are highly prized; to admit weakness is to accept failure.  Venture capitalists are reluctant to give money to people who might be risky.  Someone with bipolar disorder or narcissistic rage is risky to lead a project.  The stigma of mental illness is equal to risk, so business people shun it.

I find it ironic business people does not treat individuals with diabetes or high blood pressure in a similar fashion.  Mental illness if managed correctly, resembles those chronic diseases.  So the stigma of mental illness and its effects on a career prevent people from getting help when they need it.

Taken together, I think these six factors in the modern workplace make it fertile soil to nature mental illness.  Most business people pay lip service to their employee’s mental health because they are trying to keep the business running, meet payroll, and keep investors happy.  It is an ugly spiral; if we want productivity and GDP numbers to improve the business community will have to make some significant reforms.

Just as a factory with fewer fatal accidents is more productive one with deadly accidents; then the contemporary office with fewer mental health problems is more competitive than an office filled with dysfunctional people.  What we currently have is not sustainable, it is better to reform now than wait and see what happens next.

Until next time.

Complexity is not cool

Complexity does not help.

One of my biggest frustrations as an agile coach, scrum master, and software developer is how blithely business people think complexity is a good thing.  I do not refute that contemporary society is complicated and that living and working in global economy is challenging.  That does not mean that business people have a right to make this situation more complicated because complexity hides inefficiency, corruption, and stupidity better than any conspiracy theory could imagine.  This week I want to talk about simplicity and why it is important in agile and business.

This week the Harvard Business Review came out with a great article about the bank crisis of 2008 and how eight years later we still haven’t recovered from it.  At the heart of the article was the thesis that career specialists in an industry don’t make good decisions.  Worse, career specialists suffer from three characteristics which hurt their industry: hubris, blinkered vision, and lack of foresight.  With these three traits it was only a matter of time that these experts created a situation which nearly ruined the global economy.

I run into these situations all the time.  I remember having a discussion with an executive which sold medical supplies to nursing homes.  We were talking about how we set prices for our customers and how we do the accounting.  I was given a lecture about how our business was different from a traditional “retail” business because the products were going to nursing homes.  I remarked that the rules of accounting have not changed in 100 years and that everyone learned accounting from the same textbooks in college.  I was told that I had a bad attitude and that I should adjust the accounting system to meet the needs of the business.  Shortly, I left the company.  It was clear it was the kind of culture which used complexity hide misconduct.

Another instance was a company president who could not purchase an MSDN licenses to make sure all of his software was upgraded.  They would rather pay for a license here and there.  This meant the office had versions of office ranging from 1995 to 2003 and applications could not communicate with each other.  It was a nightmare that could have been solved if someone picked up the phone and purchased a license for the entire office.  Instead, it was easier for someone to go to the office supply store and pick up another shrink wrapped box of software which they would have to integrate with the rest of the office.  A complicated problem could be solved with a simple phone call but leadership choose complexity over simplicity.

According to the principles of the Agile Manifesto, simplicity is the art of maximizing the amount of work not done.  This means as the agile coach and as a scrum master, I spend a great deal of time asking if we really need to do something.  I spend plenty of time trying to find the simplest path to a solution.  I also say no to plenty of requests.  It isn’t easy but if you are going to reduce complexity at the office someone needs to be smart enough to say, “I don’t understand this, and because I don’t understand it, I can’t make it work.”

Until next time.

 

Everyone has a bad day.

Everyone can have a bad day

Everyone is entitled to a bad day.  We live in an imperfect world where directions are not followed, colleagues don’t have the same sense of urgency, and the printer is out of toner.  It is worse for agile teams because they are expected to deliver at the end of each sprint and a few bad days can pile up into a failed sprint. As a scrum master it is up to you to accept bad days and help you team avoid future ones.  This week on my blog the emotional work necessary to make it through to bad times.

Each agile team depends on a scrum master.  It is part of the scrum guide and is a necessary to help teams improve.  When the team is having a bad day it is particularly important the scrum master is around to listen team member’s vent.  Listening is one of the most important skills of a scrum master.  It will help you diagnose problems with the team and learn about the obstacles which are creating that bad day.  Some of the issues are interpersonal, in this way it is up to the scrum master to play therapist and counselor to the individuals having problems.

This work is hard and emotionally draining.  Some of this work can be futile.  One employee spent most of their time not doing work instead of completing projects, it drove me insane.  If they spent as much effort doing what was expected as they did attempting to avoid work they would have been a valuable team member.  Instead, deadlines were missed and the morale of the remaining team was brought down.  I spent much of my time doing HR work documenting this individual’s malfeasance and senior leadership could not or would not remove this individual from the development team for cause.  It would take the entire team turning over and a series of layoffs before this individual would be let go.  It took three years to manage out a bad team member from a scrum team when it should have been a matter of weeks.

Other times you have members of your team who are whiny, entitled, and unable to follow directions.  The project management tool is too complex.  People are not returning phone calls and they can’t get work done on time because they won’t work more than forty hours.  When you attempt to coach these individuals they have an alibi for their behavior and ignore your direction.  These are people who are not good enough to keep and they too good fire.  You are going to spend most of your time working with these individuals.

Sometimes, I have to let down the mask of command and let the team know that I am sick, tired or angry, otherwise it will come out in a spasm of unprofessional behavior.  I am constantly on guard of mansplaining to a co-worker.  Sometimes it gets to the point where I have to say, “I am very angry with you and in order to be professional with you I have to walk away and cool off.”  It isn’t pretty, but for me it is necessary if I am going to do my job properly.

Sometimes I skip lunch with my team members so that I can collect my thoughts.  Other times, I leave the office to take a walk or go to the barber shop to try and improve my attitude.  The point is you cannot always be upbeat and inspirational every working day of your life.  You are allowed to have bad days.  This might explain why psychotherapists always have a professional therapist to speak with.  Dealing with all that mental illness and human suffering takes an emotional toll and they need to speak with somebody who understands.  I wish there was a service like that for scrum masters.

So don’t worry.  You are allowed to have a bad day.  What you are not allowed to have is that bad day effecting your long term effectiveness or your team.  Take time out to unwind and de-stress.  Walk away from situations which trigger anger and remember that the scrum team needs you in order to be successful.

Until next time.

Humanities and Liberal Arts are Good for Technology

I want liberal arts in my business

Occasionally, the news of the week prompts me to yell expletives at my web browser or television.  This was a financial literacy course called, Teen Financial Education Day.  It seemed innocent enough teaching young people how to use credit responsibly, how to use the banking system, and make smart investments.  It was innocent until you saw the advertising materials which said things like “A ballerina yesterday.  An engineer today.”  As a successful scrum master and software developer this ticked me off.  This week on the blog I want to talk about why and emphasize that we need humanities, liberal arts, and the STEM in order to have a successful business community.

I graduated from Illinois State University with a major in Mass Communication’s and a minor in philosophy.  I pursued the minor because it was a subject which interested me.  I pursued the Mass Communications degree because I was going to work in radio.  I could not have picked a worse major as the radio business outside Chicago began to contract and the recession of 1990 evaporated any other jobs.  As a child of the Reagan 1980’s who said no to drugs, worked hard in school and strived to better himself; it was a very bitter pill to swallow.  I did everything expected of me by society and my elders and I was rewarded with underemployment and ridicule.

It would take me eight years from when I graduated from college to find a career in the technology field.  It was the giddy and stupid days of the dot com bubble and I went back to community college to learn visual basic.  At the ripe old age of 30, I was starting my career from scratch.  I was a self-taught technologist.  Funny thing was that my experience in newspaper, radio, and mass media made me a natural fit as a web developer.  I could discuss typography with print professionals in a language they understood.  I understood the shorthand of marketing professionals.  I knew things about color, shape and art which didn’t have to be explained.  As technology changed with the addition of CSS and XML, I was able to quickly adapt and retrain myself because I learned those concepts in school studying alien concepts like monads, existential nausea, and the payola scandals of the 1960’s.

As a liberal arts and humanity’s student, I had an advantage over my more technical colleagues because I had the “soft” skills and communications abilities to help software projects get done.  So when a bank like Wells Fargo says these skills are not necessary as part of financial literacy education it makes me want to become a hulking green rage monster.  Furthermore, when that bank is the second largest provider of private student loans in the United States, it looks like that a financial institution is trying to pick and choose which majors students should pursue.  It looks fishy at best and market manipulative at worst.

We need humanities and liberal arts in American culture.  We need humanities and liberal arts in American business because these graduates have the writing, speaking, learning and teaching skills that businesses need.  They understand different cultures.  Someone with a background in gender studies could help reduce sexual harassment in the workplace.  A worker with an understanding of Langston Hughes, Nina Simone or the Harlem Renaissance might be better explain diversity issues or #BlackLivesMatter to people who might not have that understanding.  Finally, an art history major would be a perfect choice for a UX designer or Web designer.

This is why we need liberal arts and humanities.  We need it because life is more than ones and zeros.  It is about people and inspiring them, understanding them, and helping them be better people.  It is about developing open minds and optimism about the future.  It is about understanding the past and the way our culture has evolved over the last 3000 years to become what it is today and what it might be tomorrow.  Liberal arts helps build better technology and better businesses and it is about time that others begin to see that.

Until next time.

Process is a lame excuse

Responding to change is like jazz, blues, and rock

One of the central tenants of the agile manifesto is responding to change over following a plan.  For someone with a background in science or engineering it seems commonsense.  Sadly, many people in leadership roles see responding to change as a threat.  This week I want to talk about “process” and why it get in the way of agility.

I have plenty of late nights and early mornings on the phone with off-shore consultants.  These meeting are typical stand-up meetings familiar with co-located teams.  It is also an opportunity to share technical knowledge.  According to the scrum guide, stand up meeting should be fifteen minutes long.  The scrum guide does not take into account a team thirteen time zones away and working with complex legacy system.  So our meeting lasts about thirty minutes and we have follow up calls between individual members.  We have no formal process but the scrum guide is not helpful so we responded to change over following a plan and had a longer meeting.

Many business leader like to say they have processes in place to minimize risk.  It has been my experience that many of those processes are in place to maximize control because those business leaders do not trust their people to do the job correctly.  This makes me sad.  Instead of working with customers and solving problems, many people spend their days wrestling with the bureaucracy and process.  Confronted with this environment people loose initiative and motivation.  Eventually, nothing gets done except the stale process.

This may have worked fifty years ago but product cycles are measured in weeks instead of years today.  People need to be motivated and engaged if the wish to compete in this new business environment.  Process makes it hard for people to be motivated and engaged because it discourages original thinking and ownership of decisions.

That does not deter business leaders from coming up with more process.  To them, a business is like a symphony orchestra with every not scripted and every performer knowing his or her place.  If someone deviates from the music sheet or the conductors instructions then they are expelled.  I strongly disagree with this metaphor, I see a business like a jazz or blues combo.  The players have strong technical skills but com improvise based on the situation and can adapt to changing situations with the audience.  To a command and control business leader, this is unacceptable and a recipe for chaos.  To the agilest, it is responding to change over following a plan.

One of my favorite stories about Jazz history is about Benny Goodman.  A critic said his music was immature and untrained.  Goodman responded by recording Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A major to critical and popular acclaim.  In a more modern context Wynton Marsalis plays trumpet in both jazz in classical situations.  Finally, Trombone Shorty easily transitions between Jazz and Rock music.  In short, it is common for jazz musicians to cross over into other styles of music while it is uncommon for classical performers to do so.  I blame the “process” of training and conditioning of classical musicians who struggle in ambiguous creative environments.

This is the big challenge of business.  Do we want our employees to be like classical musicians of like jazz musicians?  In my opinion, I am going to trust my business to the jazz nerds.  The will be able to respond to change when necessary.  This is why I rebel against process.  I see process as a necessary evil.  I also see it fungible and able to change.  This drives my superiors crazy because sometimes the process is the only thing which keeps them in control.  Squeaky wheels often call attention to a bad axle and managers hate that.

So I say to you, treat process with contempt and skepticism because it is an excuse for behavior at a company rather than a reason.  This makes it impossible to respond to change.  W.E. Deming said, “Survival is not mandatory,” if you follow process chances are you are more likely to become extinct.

Until next time.

Being a scrum master is about struggle.

This is what struggle looks like.

Some careers are prestigious.  Others people have high paying careers.  Finally, there are plenty of people who define their careers based of the daily struggles they give.  This week after a long three day weekend I want to talk about struggle.  

When I hear the word “struggle” it sounds like a cliche.  I have heard pampered athletes use it to describe contract negotiations.  I have seen interviews with escaped murderers talk about their “lives of struggle.”  I have even witnessed a teen-ager user the term “struggle” to describe efforts to find a liquor store to sell him beer under age.  Struggle can get to be pretty meaningless because it has so many different meaning to so many different people.   Describing struggle seems just as futile as describing “love.”

My definition of struggle requires personal sacrifice in the face of indifference and hostility.  The example I use to illustrate struggle is the lives of ballet dancers.  For years, they toil in obscurity.  A dancer can spend hours practicing and in rehearsal.  They contend with abusive instructors, self-doubt, eating disorders, and injury.  All of this pain and sacrifice for a chance to be on stage and hear the applause of the crowd.  Dancers also suffer a physical toll for this life and it is clear to see when you look at photographs of the feet of dancers.  To me, that is struggle.

A scrum master’s life is to be in a constant struggle with the organization, colleagues and the status quo.  You are like Don Quixote in Man of La Moncha jousting with windmills and upsetting the authorities.  It is not the kind of career which allows quick advancement up the corporate ladder.  A scrum master must listen like a minister, inspire like an apostle, and be ostracized like a martyr.  They should have good technical skills and social skills good enough to act like a therapist to the people around them.  It is not an easy job. 

So to be a scrum master is to live a life of struggle.  You don’t go into it for fame and fortune.  You do it in order to make a difference in the organization and if that is not why you are their then you need to be doing something else. 

Until next time.