This is my presentation from Scrum Australia 2016

1. Confessions of a Scrum Mum
How the short term heroics of a Scrum Mum
doesn’t scale
Presented by: Mia Horrigan
Partner Zen Ex Machina
@miahorri

2. Soccer Novice
• Knew nothing about soccer when Gem started
• Started to learn rules, watch EPL, play FIFA xbox
• Picked up some ideas and became Soccer Mum

3. Soccer Mum
• Run around trying to “help” prepare for the game
• Directing play, yelling instructions from sidelines
• Tell her what she did right and wrong
• Then Gem got picked in Development Squad…..

4. Parents briefing at AIS
• Congratulations your child has skills…..
• We were to watch in silence, provide no
coaching
• No place for Soccer Mums at squad level

5. Dear Scrum Mum……
• Was I being a “Soccer Mum” at work?
• I feel protective of the team and wanted them to
be successful but was I holding them back?

6. Evolution of a Scrum Master
Angel Medinilla

7. “The Scrum Guy”
• Rudimentary skills , very little experience
• Team secretary, lists impediments
• Black and White on process
• Results into low-performing teams

8. “Scrum Mum”
• Protective to their teams
• “Takes care of everything” to remove impediments
• Teams functional, but not challenged
• Results in Team stagnation

9. “True Scrum Master”
• Mentors and develops high performing teams
• Involves everyone, progressively delegates
• Challenges the team to be innovative
• Encouraging, collaborative and motivating
• Team able to learn and continuously improve

10. “Agile Sensei”
• Listens to understand context
• Asks why ( “5 Whys pattern”)
• Masters silence
• Promotes innovative thought

11. Parallel to my evolution as a
Scrum Coach
• 15+ years of program management and
practitioner roles in service delivery
• Was used to being the “Manager” directing
teams, making decisions, resolving problems

12. Trying to be a Scrum Mum at
Scale
• Agile Coach across 8 teams
• Component teams delivering services
• Digital Transformation
• Running around trying to plug holes, make
decisions and directing the teams

14. People learn skills in 4 stages
Shu: Learn a technique
Ha: Collect techniques
Ri: Invent / blend techniques
Kokoro: Simplify

15. Knowledge makes things more
complicated until it starts to simplify

16. Stuck in the “Shu” box
• Stuck in process land
• Stagnation, burnout, no improvement, no innovation
• Succeeding because of a few good individuals

17. “Scrum Mum” Anti Pattern
• Directing and telling the team what to do
• Teams never become empowered or self managing
• Not sustainable, NOT scalable

18. Rules that are broken
• #5 - Build projects around motivated individuals. Give
them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done.
• #11 - The best architectures, requirements, and
designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
• #12 - At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behaviour accordingly.

19. Treatments??????
• Looked at what other coaches did

20. Soccer Coach - Academy
• Saw how he helped her consolidate the 10
key skills in soccer
• Did drills, showed how to read the play so she
could make split second decision required

21. Treatments
•Learn contingency based patterns
•Apply based on an assessment on
environment and capability
(Fiedler, et al 1967)

22. 8 Elements Coaching Model

23. “A” Level Coach
• Gem made elite squad (FIFA World Cup 2015)
• Coach was practitioner (ex Matilda), trainer,
mentor, motivator, leader and change agent
• Made it simple, targeted, focused disciplined

24. Elite Agile Coach
Core behaviours:
Listen
Ask deep questions
Empower
Enable to act
Reinforce behaviour
Increase insight

25. Heart of Agile Coaching

26. Conclusions
• Being a Scrum Mum is an anti pattern – not
sustainable, not scalable
• Just looking after the integrity of the Process not
enough either to enable teams to learn or improve
• Good Leadership requires a contingency based
approach (Fiedler et al, 1967)
• Coach needs to be a leader – help the team through
its maturity based on its context of need for
improvement to be repeatable, sustainable and
long-lived

27. Fin!
• Mia Horrigan
• Zen Ex Machina
• @miahorri
• Mia.Horrigan@zenexmachina.com