Presented by Alper Sahin at agile42 Connect in Berlin, November 2015. Bonnier Publications would like to share experiences from getting started with Scrum. What blood, sweat and tears did it take to start making it work?

1. It takes Structure and Discipline
New habits and a change of mindset
Selected learnings

2. About me
• 2012 Cert. Scrum Master
• Trying to use the framework since then as:
o A Team Leader
o Project Manager/Product Owner
o Since Nov. 2014 as full-time Scrum Master for two software dev. teams
o Since April 2015 as a father for a new born child

3. About Bonnier
Publications
• Part of Bonnier AB
• 16 countries – 350 brands/companies
• Over 8000 employees working with media
• We are in the beginning of a digital transformation

4. Interactive
• Two Development Teams:
• WhiteAlbum: The Editorial Platform
• APP-Team: Features and functionality that the Platform
can use and the infrastructure that allows 3rd party to
develop for us

5. Structure & Discipline
• Structure as:
o Creation of a process flow for collaboration and co-ordination
o Organizing our time effectively and make room for flexibility
o Supporting working as a team and not a group of individuals

6. Structure&Discipline
Discipline as:
- The actions that supports and makes the structure and the process happen

7. Selected symptoms of
dys-function
• Structure: A lot of interpretations of the Framework
• Structure: Top-down management of Development Team
o Was not a Team but a Group – no explicit Shared Goal
o Co-coordinating tasks to - instead of setting the stage/vision for the dev. team
• Really difficult because P.O used to be Scrum Master and Team Lead for the developers.
• No environment for Pull for the Development Team
• Lack of mutual trust between P.O and Development Team
o Development Team working as a group of individuals “My task/User Story is Done”
o Dev. Team Pleasing product Owner and afraid of committing
o Organization expecting fixed Scope and Fixed deadline without affecting quality
o Push for velocity increase
o Scrum Master for some felt like a Process Monster just creating obstacles
• Development Team Discipline
o “Team Forgetting/not doing what agreed”
• Too many to-do´s
• Team not taking responsibility. Individuals ´hiding´ in the team – “Others will probably do it..”
o Seeing ceremonies as waste/boring – lets just develop
o Retrospective Bottleneck – team unwilling to add more improvements in a long period
o Development team not doing what was agreed at retrospective

10. Structure Issue: A lot of interpretations of
the Framework
• By-the-book to get a common agreed structure
• Scrum Master becomes a Scrum Mom

11. Learning:
Structure Issue: Top-down management
• Always have a Sprint Goal
• Assign to Team and not individuals – but wait to see who grabs it..
• Step back to give Team responsibility
• Dev. Team hold each other accountable. To gain trust and to avoid micro-
management
• Start measure P.O by quality as well

12. Learning
Issue: Top-down management
• Scrum Mom role prevents Dev. Team from taking responsibility
• Scrum Master by some seen as a process monster just adding obstacles.
• Learnings:
• Be aware of when to go from Scrum Mom to Scrum Master
• Visualizing the Shu-Ha-Ri to visualize steps we go through

13. Issue: Discipline
o Team “Forgetting/not doing what agreed”
• Learnings:
• Be aware that it is hard to change the simplest habit.

14. Issue: Discipline
• Team not taking responsibility.
• Individuals ´hiding´ in the team – “Others will probably do it..”
• Learnings:
• Step back as a P.O – team was expecting answer
• Wait for someone in the team to take the responsibility even if it gets really
silent and awkward

15. Issue: Discipline
o Seeing ceremonies as waste/boring – lets just develop
• Learnings
• Understand the Why and wished outcome
• Went through Why do we for each Ceremony and Artifact
• Started every ceremony with Purpose and Wished outcome

16. Issue: Discipline
o Retrospective Bottleneck – no new chosen improvements
• Learnings
• Find the form the suits the dev. team. We changed our retrospective form to
a more light-weight form
• Be patient and focus on the Process and the Goal will be a result of it
• Its all the small things that ads up – no need to look for the game changer

17. Issue: Discipline
o Development team not doing what was agreed
o Learning:
• It just takes one team member to get the process off track and make
artifacts useless
• We wanted perfect from the beginning and went back to ´Basics´ and
builded up slowly

18. Conclusion
• Structure:
• To get started it is essential to have a common agreed
structure where we know why we have each ceremony
and artifact. A structure that allows each role to do what
they are responsible of.
• When this works. Start trying out new improvements

19. Conclusion
• Discipline:
• To get started: Do what is agreed and start making it
your own later.
• Be aware that changing a habit is hard.
• Until it becomes a habit our brain is using unwanted
energy on it.

20. Next Steps
• We would like to create more transparency for the rest of
the organization.
• Establishing a Agile Transition Team to take the process
to an organizational level

21. Questions?