Scrum and the Golden Circle

 

We're going to take another detour from the Flavors of Agile and, instead, touch on a few points from the CSPO class I participated in, last week.

For those of you not aware of what CSPO means, it stands for Certified Scrum Product Owner; it's the business side of Scrum.  In a nutshell, the Product Owner is responsible for creating & prioritizing the product backlog, answering the developer's questions so that they know what to build, maintaining the product backlog, and accepting or rejecting completed work. 

I need to give a disclaimer before I continue; I consider the information taught in the CSPO class to be valuable.  I'm not going to rehash the class, step by step.  Instead, I will be addressing some areas where I feel more could be done.  I recommend this class to anyone wanting to gain a greater understanding of how Scrum works.  In fact, if you want to be a scrum master, I recommend you take both the CSM and CSPO class.  Don't let the following criticisms dissuade you.

Early in the class, the instructor introduced us (or re-introduced, in some cases) to Simon Sinek's concept of the Golden Circle, where you express why you do what you do, how you do it, and then what you actually do.  This was in relation to developing a project vision, but I think it has larger application.  I was hoping that this would be how the class was taught.  It was, to some extent, but there were some pieces that I feel were missing.

For starters, 'who' was missing.  I like the concept of the golden circle, but who you are doing things for needs to be considered before why.  The class addressed why, how, and what from the point of shortly before the first sprint planning session.  The gap was the sequence of events in the early stages of a project.  Who, why, how, and what are important, but in a training class, when is also important, even if it is just for one possible approach. 

Another gap is the notion that the scrum master is the coach for the product owner, even before the first sprint planning session.  How can a scrum master coach a product owner and be responsible for making sure the product owner holds the needed meetings and communicates effectively with stakeholders (as stated during the class) when the scrum master class does not teach everything that the product owner should do, prior to the first sprint planning session?  I can't coach someone or be responsible for making sure they do their job, if I don't know what that person is supposed to do.

Let me be clear… I am not criticizing the instructor or the training provider.  The only reason I don't praise them is that it would not be fair to associate them with my criticisms.  I am criticizing the approach to how Scrum is taught which is, in large part, controlled by the Scrum Alliance.  The CST develops the content, but Scrum Alliance has guidelines for it and has to approve it.  If you take a Scrum class, you are learning how to use Scrum in an environment that already uses Scrum.  You are not learning how to implement Scrum from scratch.  You can borrow bits and pieces, but if you don't take a top-down approach to implementing Scrum across an organization, you will be lucky if all you do is fail.  I'm not sure you can take a class on 'How to Implement Scrum' without first engaging a consultant to help make the actual transition.  I may have to look into that.

I don't fault Scrum Alliance for taking this approach.  There is no one-size-fits-all approach for organizational change, and that is what implementing Scrum is.  I think it would be easier for companies to recognize the benefits of moving to Scrum if Scrum Alliance was more involved in accurately defining the bigger picture of 1) who should use Scrum, 2) why they should use it, 3) how to make the transition to Scrum, and 4) what to do once the transition is made.