2020 soft skills

Case studies for Scrum Masters

Case Study 1:

You are the scrum master for the project where the budget has been fixed. The scope has been discussed with the top-level managers and high-level plan has acknowledged. Managers demonstrated the confidence that IT delivery team has performed such work and can do it on time within budget. Now the project has come to the execution phase. During the execution of the project, you have started following the scrum process and start elaborating the backlog, showing the demo to the business stakeholders. You have started discovering that there many challenges which never looked at during the initial scope analysis and budget finalization. Whenever you are reviewing all these challenges to the business, the business is consistently blaming saying that IT is not competent to accomplish the work. You also as a scrum master acknowledge that there are competency issues that with the current team skill-set many things are not going as per the plan.

Give it a thought:
What you should be doing? Business is pretty upset? you may lose the contract? There is a deadline on the final date for go live and business is anxious.

• What do you think as a scrum master you can do?

Case study 2:

You are a scrum master for a team who is working on the latest digital product, your team is working on a couple of microservices API. Your team is small and having 9 members; most of the team members are having 4-6 yrs. of experience and they are extremely efficient developers and your manager is a micromanager where he is not having any other obligation other than taking care of the 9 individuals. He is forcefully coaching the team, where he is 100% immersed in the PM way of looking at the world. You have one Product owner who is in France and there are 3 more developers working as a contractor from

France working with this India team; any day their contract can be terminated and all the scrum events are going on smoothly but everywhere you discover people are sitting on top of your shoulders, asking for micro-level details, asking for billing hrs., asking for velocity vs quality defect data, and pressurizing to do more? At every senior leadership visit, your product is showcased as a digital product development initiative. You are under terrible pressure to deliver higher quality product and through rapid delivery. You are having an issue and the team members are not performing well and the attrition is very high.

• How do you drive?

Case study 3: 

You are the scrum master for a product-based company where your team is supporting back office work for a bank. Your end product development is done in India by your scrum team. You are dependent on some component which comes from the Vendor company based in Gurugram, India. Your product owner and the user base are in Germany. You have a total of 15 members in the team and many stakeholders are spread across multi geographical locations. You are the senior scrum master for this team and an expert who is expected to minimize some of the burning issues happening with the team. You have asked a few of the team members who are working for a long time with this scrum team. They showed a pessimistic view that nothing can be done. By applying your world-class communication skills,

• How can you motivate the team for a better performance? 
• How will you break the distributed challenges in this case? 
• How do you simplify vendor management and your scrum teams’ frictions with other partners?

Case study 4:
Penguin software is a small-scale software development company. They are mostly into software services. They have got a subcontract from a product development company to do end to end automation testing by integrating their team with the product development company’s scrum team.
The expectation is very high which is to rapidly automate all the end to end test suites that are continuously produced by the full-stack team members. As a scrum master, every sprint you will be fully in charge of the overall product quality. The team is using the latest cutting-edge technology for developing the solution. One of the challenges that is present is that you do not have highly competent team members to run the show. But while getting the order, your sales team had promised a lot. Now the order has come, and you need to fulfill the dream. You are the scrum master for the team.

• What are your thoughts to build the team, which is doing long term product development work for more than a year?

Case Study 5:
Project Power world has 40 team members in a scrum team. There are 5 scrum teams. It is a geographically distributed team. There was an immense expectation from this team with a tight timeline. Team was formed newly after going through several months of recruitment drive for new members. Each scrum team has one scrum master and one shared product owner for all these scrum teams. Each scrum team was dealing with many challenges within the India teams plus among India and Sweden teams. Leaders of the team are struggling hard to bring in scrum discipline and establish the self-organized team. There was cultural barrier which is leading to many issues, there were new ways of working which causing issues with old timer, there were new governance which causing some issues etc. There were leaderships support but only 50%.
By knowing more about human psychology,

• How can each scrum master can Improve the situation? 
• What do you do in such situation?

Case Study 6:
You are the scrum master for one of the product teams which is developing a Realtime Database. This is a database and it is not a standalone product. This database will be used by the Airline platform and there are many consumers who will use this product. Your team is releasing through sprints, but the airline platform team is doing a release in six months. You are going too fast for them and your team is not getting real-time feedback about the software you are building.
How are you planning to collaborate with the airline platform team, which is 100+ team members?
Your entire product management team is supporting you, but you are getting resistance while collaborating with the Airline team.
As a scrum master, what do you think you will be able to do to control the damage?
There is a lot of conflict within the team and outside the team. Teams are based out of Denmark, US and India. You are the senior scrum master and with the team for the last few months.

• What will be your change strategy?

Case study 7: 
Opto automation has many scrum teams which are building software for the next generation Industrial Automation control systems for the cement plant. The team has adopted many tools to increase the speed of delivery. New tools to code, design, test and deploy everything is being used in the project and it is completely new for the team members. It is a 30-member team and there are 3 scrum teams which are geographically distributed (India, Switzerland and US).
Recently, it moved from waterfall to an agile way of working. You are the scrum master for one of the scrum teams in India.

• How do you ensure all the change initiatives run smoothly and are sustained for the long-term? 
• Why do you think culturally divisive teams will listen to you? 

They are already comfortable with the team tools they were using.

Case study 8:
Germpower is an automobile software product company where many scrum teams are working to develop a product. Recently, they received an order to build a product, which needs to be migrated to a modern technology from a legacy product. The organization is not a high paying company and most of the team members do not have a strong track record with their education.
The software was absolutely unfamiliar, and nobody knows where to commence. The Scrum master was a senior team member within this organization. The Scrum master was one of the best people leaders and he was accepted by many of his colleagues. His leadership style was genuine and people-oriented. Everyone prefers to work with him. He encourages individuals to take initiatives; he supports and cares about the well being of the people. During the initial days, when the teams were in the discovery phase, there were demands to put extra efforts to know more about the technology plus the legacy system, as the scrum master was easygoing and a fun-loving individual. The team members were always putting extra efforts to understand more about the technology and the legacy system. Unfortunately, after 6 months of the project, he received an onsite long-term opportunity which was greatly required by the organization and he has to travel to Switzerland with his family. You have been recruited as the new scrum master for this project.

• What do you think you will be performing to reinstate the old scrum master style?

Case study 9:
MegaAero system is a product-based company building solution for the Aircraft cockpit. Recently the organization has started a new solution for the Cockpit Display System. Though the development is with multiple scrum teams, but the parameters are fixed (Time, cost, etc.). The contract has been signed, the release date is fixed, team members are from different departments and they are billing 50% for this program. You are the scrum master for `the multiple scrum teams!
An Expert higher than the Product Owner is your boss/Line manager. He is setting everything and asking on a daily basis about the program progress. The team members are under tremendous pressure to deliver. You can see the psychological pressure on the teams. They are already burning out due to the pressure. They express their concerns in the many retrospectives which you have started driving.

• What do you think about this scrum program and what should you do, what can you do differently by knowing the motivational factors?

Case Study 10:

You are the scrum master for the team name RAID which is building up a platform product for multiples business lines. Initially, this project was launched with a small idea and after one year of work, this was accepted by the business extremely successfully, and businesses prefer to develop RAID 2.0 and other business lines also grew interested to reuse this platform. The platform is built up in the XYZ cloud web service platform. Team members from XYZ company were in your scrum team as a full-stack developer to establish this proof of concept and ensure the capability of the XYZ cloud platform. Now after one year, your company decided to minimize the contract employee from the XYZ as a full-time developer. You as a scrum master scared that with the competent team members you have, you will not be able to demo sprint on sprint. As you had experienced at an initial couple of sprints where you were struggling to develop potentially shippable products every sprint, that why you have hired XYZ full-stack developers with higher prices and XYZ also involved to establish their cloud platform to be used. 

• What do you consider you need to work out as a scrum master? 

There is pressure from top to get rid of XYZ team members owing to the higher cost.

Can these case studies be solved by below model?

Pancha Bhoota Model for Achieving Organizational Agility

Look at these companies, How their 5 forces has been managed?
Pancha Bhoota Model helps organizations to stay relevant in turbulence time.

7C CHAKRA MODEL FOR INDIVIDUAL AGILITY

7 SKILLS,
7 CHAKRAS
HOW WELL THESE SKILLS ARE DEVELOPED?
WHAT ARE WE DOING TO DEVELOP ALL THESE SKILLS?
MAP WITH GREAT ROLE MODEL LEADERS WHOM YOU ARE FOLLOWING, HOW ARE THEIR SKILLS DEVELOPED?

7c Model

The Scrum Master Guidebook Comments

Experimental Mindset

Comment from Abhay

The Scrum Master Guidebook...

If You Google Search "Scrum Master Books", You got all these list

Kindle book is available

To all my well-wishers, after 19 days of the paperback version of The Scrum Master Guidebook, The Kindle book is also available for reading,
Please have a look and experience the learning, please share with your companions and support me to spread the message. Thanks to all my well-wishers.

The Scrum Master Guidebook for Self Coaching

Scrum Guide

It has been 10 years .......Down memory lane...

I have started my Scrum Master Journey in 2009, in ABB Power Automation Product development unit.Thanks to the management, I was the fortunate one to start these experiments, which has changed my life altogether after that. 

It was a New Generation Power System Explorer Product development. We were 30 members team from Sweden, India, and Poland. I have enjoyed the power of scrum to produce something unique. Microsoft Team foundation server was the tool that helped us run the show(TFS 2009). 3 years I have worked as a Scrum Master, to raise the product, sprint by sprint, release after release.

Immense knowledge and challenge we had at that time. That knowledge was intensive and powerful which helped me till today.

This is product we have worked for...

2012, I wrote my first paper in PMI Bangalore, PMPC 2012, whatever I have gained knowledge during that time. It was not exactly scrum paper, but for productivity improvement by using scrum as an instrument.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B36WDI5LB8khOTdxVmxEM0tOYXc/edit

With that knowledge power, I have moved into ABB Industrial Automation Product development in ABB as an Agile coach in 2012

We have to build Control system product development with a distributed team, members from the USA, Switzerland, Finland, and India. Awesome experience so far, intensive challenges, outstanding team members. Varied culture. That worked has shaken up my knowledge extensively.

I was the Scrum Master and coach for that product 

That environment so rich for research and development, we could able to experiment with many thing and leadership was allowed to experiment many things.

This is the product look like...

As a Coach, I have written many papers in International journals with the experience and experiment we have done at that time. Few papers...

Why team should collaborate more

https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/pmwj32-Mar2015-Patary-collaboration-effectiveness-advisory-article.pdf

What a Coach can do for the organization 

https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/pmwj31-feb2015-Patary-contribution-from-agile-coach-advisory-article.pdf

How to build a better product 

https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/pmwj37-Aug2015-Patary-redefining-product-development-featured-paper.pdf

Experiment gamification at our team

https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/pmwj28-nov2014-Patary-gamifying-agile-projects-Featured-Paper2.pdf

Coach as a consultant

https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/pmwj34-May2015-Patary-learning-from-consultant-colleague-Commentary.pdf

I kept capturing my learning, good, bad and ugly ...

I have presented many conferences during that time, due to the rich knowledge acquired from product development...

After that I moved my journey, coming out from the dedicated delivery role and pursued as an Agile coach which I am doing till now ….

As a part of the journey, now also I play the role of Scrum Master but not for delivery but for the present support for the team

Scrum Master in Product Development is a wonderful journey so far where we are constructing something which impacts the society ……Those days, those experiments, those team members, leaders cemented my foundation on which I stand today...Awesome people, awesome ambient.

The Organization is a Laboratory! and we are all researchers?

Strange, is not it?

In my previous organization, In an interview, the interviewer asked this query,

How do you ensure your continuous learning?

I answered,s and the answer has become a game-changer for me, I replied, - “to me, Organization is a Laboratory, I do research here; I test all the hypothesis and verify my learning. I continue to do so to establish my continuous learning. Every day I must go to the office to solve a purpose and I pay attention to my hypothesis, I search for a problem, seek solutions and analyze those solutions and validate with my understanding..."

I must declare, with all our knowledge, research, it is not guaranteed that you will consistently gain benefit;

It is an endless endeavor.

Recently one of my companions insisted to apply for an opening in his company, if I get a job in that company, it would easy for us to commute as we stay in the same apartment complex, He gets a good employee referral, win-win for both of us. The organization is also very well known as the best people-friendly company. After some weeks, I inquire what happened, he informed, one specific certification is missing in my profile, so they are not considering me, he asked what is the use of that certification, I explained, that certifications organization bought your company!!! without that stamp, it would problematic to obtain the gate pass to that company. You may be Ph.D., but that stamp is a prerequisite to obtaining the gate pass! he realized! Nowadays it is also not so safe to express against any certification! there are battalions to safeguard those service.

I believe we need to continue our research journey to make the organization better in some of the other diverse ways.

Why do I research? Why should we research?

The research leads to the methodical compilation of information about the activities, attributes, and outcomes of programs, benefits, organizations and associations served by organizations. 

The main purpose of the research is to instruct action, to prove a theory, and contribute to developing knowledge in a field of study. 

A mechanism for Building Knowledge and Facilitating Learning

Means to Know Various Challenges and Increase community Awareness

Nurture individual potential and realize objectives through numerous opportunities.

A Seed to Love Reading, Writing, Analyzing, and Sharing Valuable Information

Further understanding of expanding community needs

Constitute a different understanding about what works and what does not

Push for organizational learning

How do we conduct the research better in our laboratory?

Every day we read many books, concepts, models, frameworks and theories.

These are observations by some authors in some context which he/she might have looked at performing.

Will it work for me, for us? Can we investigate and confirm the same? Can we confront the numerous assumption used?

Why to take it indiscriminately?

Let us dry run, analyze,Investigate everything in our context and note down our observation

Affirm what the author or writer said. What will take place, in a process, we come out with a stronger and different model which we are examining performing further in our context.

Research is an inseparable part of learning: both continuous self-education and researching in college,on the job etc.

Set a schedule: I compose weekly 2 blogs on LinkedIn. For the last 4 years, I have noted 485 blogs.

Most of the points are based on the publication and analyzed those theories at the diverse organizations.

For last 20+ years all these organizations have become my laboratory for experiments.

I started capturing my research, observation and finding in one of the websites I was maintaining, Buildandsustainorganization. in, From 2012, later I closed this site. I had 75 posts on that website in one year period.

Then I started writing my research observation in technical paper in international and national magazines.

And later moved into LinkedIn, Slideshare , https://theagilistguidebook.blogspot.com/ and https://thescrummasterguidebook.blogspot.com/

All these laboratories helped me to experiment and I could continue my research and listing down all observations and creating multiple assets.

My latest assets which can help you to become better are ....

You can read more about these two books

https://theagilistguidebook.blogspot.com/

and

https://thescrummasterguidebook.blogspot.com/

We all are researchers doing research at various organizations, few of us are sharing and others are still compiling, waiting for the daylight to come.

Don't hesitate to share your coaching journals to all of us, let us learn from each others. We all are little Einstein in our world....

Comment from Vishal

The Scrum Master Guidebook after 15 days.....

My dear colleagues, It has been 15 days since my second book has been published! The Scrum Master Guidebook, the paperback copy.

In 15 days, 11 of my early adopter friend has procured this book, thanks for your confidence, trust showed up for this book. I admire your learning attitude and grab this book as an early adopter to grasp the knowledge as promptly as possible to encash benefits to gain a competitive advantage.

I am sure the same attitude will take you to a different height of success. All the very best for your endeavor... As a writer, I cherish to have such passionate readers…

Comment from Raj and Sandip

Comment from Vishal

How keeping coaching Journal/log/notebook aided me to compose 2 books?

According to psychologist Barbara Markway, ‘there’s simply no better way to learn about your thought processes than to write them down.’

One of my mentors once recommended a couple of years back to keep a journal for all the teams I am coaching as a coach.

That was a golden word for me for my growth personally and professionally, which I cherish till today! when I look back, I am thankful to her.

I have started maintaining a word document and journal to arrest my observation.

Now a days, I observe more minute details and share with the team members weekly, what is my observation, and what is my recommendation.

After several months of coaching , some time, those word documents mature into a 500-page document!!

After coaching discussion, it is legitimate that we won’t remember everything we see, hear, and think about our members’ growth, so record it down in a devoted place.

Journal writing is the blueprint to success in coaching; that is what I personally work out.

It is the responsibility of coaches to ensure that they follow a methodical and comprehensive approach of record keeping. We can not recall everything afterward and we engaged in numerous teams coaching at the same moment.

Consistent journaling stimulates improvement, progress, and development during a coaching process. This is for both the coach and coachee.

To facilitate assessment, planning, and evaluation of progress journal/log/notebook serves to precisely recall and reflect.

The purpose of journaling is not the result but the process.

Thoughts, conclusion, and key observations of the last coaching session should be part of the journal/log/notebook.

Compose about the situations you have experienced in the coaching context promptly after the session.

Document milestones and occasions of achievement are also a better subject to capture.

Observations, ideas, aha-moments, queries for myself, what not, everything should be part of the journal.

Journaling gives room for ideas and explanations. Most of the ideas appear to me when I studied back the noted journal for a team. I pick up better and further thoughts for the experiment when I talk against previous observation.

The journal could be generated during the session to capture key messages, words, language, and themes, empowering the coach to remind themselves and draw the notes back into the conversation.

Keeping a journal during the process of coaching allows coaches to chronicle the team member’s way of growth, development, and achievement.

Sometimes coaches will maintain a formal written contract, which will be utilized and confirmed by the learner and coach, both will retain a copy.

Journaling helps coach and coachee to analyze everyone’s thoughts and feelings. Both can maintain the journal, but as a coach for me, it is a must.

The coaching log has to be visible and present for you to literally use it.

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” Anne Frank

In some cases, I may aspire to record each coaching session in exceptional detail, and in some cases, I may choose to create only sketchy observations. 

Sometimes I also record specific observation experiments that add lessons learned captured. In some cases, the coach may provide the team members with a standardized training evaluation sheet to seize the improvement items for all.

After each coaching discussion or session, I as a coach ask

1. What can I serve to aid this team member’s development between now and our next coaching session?
2. What did I understand from this session that I didn’t notice going in?
3. What did the individual I’m coaching learn? What key messages were reinforced in the session?

It’s an impressive open secret for all the members who are occupied in coaching. If we practice this accurately, it will transform all of us. Predominantly in the constructive manner.

Transformation Guidebooks....Manual for all Agilists

Self Development to------>>> Team Development, An adventure that will continue for every agilist’s career.

I have been traversing this expedition and still continuing …..

The 2 guidebooks which I have composed, The Scrum Master Guidebook and The Agilist’s Guidebook has, a distinct purpose. They focus on unique demands. But every agilist’s can gain benefit from these 2 books.

The Scrum Master Guidebook starts with self-development.

This book concentrate on the most important role every delivery organization requires to strengthen with utmost seriousness. Because this role carries tremendous impact in the Delivery and execution process. The Pillar of any agile organization is this Scrum Master role. Accept it or not, look at the current Pillar maturity model and success rate of the delivery.

This book propose for all the Scrum Master to pass through 7C chakra Model.

7C chakra model talks about how I can as a scrum master strengthen all these 7C areas so that I can perform better.

The challenges scrum masters faces can be addressed when we strengthen with this 7C Chakra model.

There is definitely no ambiguity when all these 7C s are strengthened by you as a scrum master, you will be able to deal with the situation better.

This workbook will highlight the below chapters or 7C chakras —

1. Chapter I How to develop awesome Communication skill?
2. Chapter II How to develop Creativity?
3. Chapter III How to develop Companionable skill?
4. Chapter IV How to develop a Competent team?
5. Chapter V How to develop Change Management skill?
6. Chapter VI How to develop Charismatic leadership skill?
7. Chapter VII How to develop Catalyst skill?

On the other way, The Agilist’s Guidebook is all about Organizational Agile Transformation.

The challenges agilists will experience to transform the organization has been explained

The Panch Bhoota, 5 forces that dominate us, has to be taken care.

We treat organizational as a Living Being, no more machine, every living being is governed by these 5 forces.

Five elements in the Pancha Bhoota Model are the enabler which will benefit the organization to gain agility.

The Agilist's Guidebook will highlight the below chapters ( 5 Forces- Pancha Bhoota Model)

1. Chapter I, How to develop ourselves as a better Coach by focusing on a few of the essential areas.
2. Chapter II, Coaching on Leadership development
3. Chapter III, Coaching focus on the High-performance team, how a coach can help?
4. Chapter IV, Coaching focuses on the right mindset and how to change this?
5. Chapter V, Coaching focus on Organizational Transformation

When we have both these books and we take actions around these 2 models ( 7C for self-development, 5 forces for Organization development) an individual will be better armed with the transformation journey.

We are gearing ourselves for the digital challenges thrust upon us.

We have to actively visualize and practice both these concepts to self-development and Organization development. 

We will have many challenges. These books are like, Army training manuals and it is the army personnel after the training has to exercise this knowledge on the battlefield and bring various heroic stories back home!

Manual is the same but individual do many heroic exercises which no training manual can capture.

https://thescrummasterguidebook.blogspot.com/

https://theagilistguidebook.blogspot.com/

You as an individual need to set up a development plan for yourself after reading these workbooks.

I am positive, we will have many stories from the ground when we started applying all these concepts.

“Companies that change may survive, but companies that transform thrive. Change brings incremental or small-scale adaptations, while transformation brings great improvements that ripple through the future of an organization.”– Nick Candito

The Scrum Master Guidebook Paperback copies

Today I have received The Scrum Master Guidebook Paperback copies for myself. I must state Publisher did a marvelous work!

Free Delivery of The Scrum Master Guidebook for one month

The Scrum Master Guidebook is on Amazon Prime, Amazon Prime members can get free delivery of this book. This is only available for one month given by the publisher.

My First two book reader friends

The Scrum Master Guidebook is available...

The Scrum Master Guidebook has Launched!

Coming soon.....

How I have composed The Scrum Master Guidebook?

The scrum master Guidebook has 8 chapters, all these chapters helped me to play my role better.

I have been performing the role of scrum master; I had a couple of questions bothering me.Few challenges which I have across and which I would prefer to highlight in these seven chapters --

• How do we become an awesome scrum master?
• How to understand people in a better way?
• How do we transform the command-and-control style to servant leadership style?
• How to break silos and promote collaboration?
• How to increase team engagement and the motivation of the Scrum team members
• Aspects of the best Agile team and how to develop more such teams?
• Facilitation and presentation challenges and how to enhance it?
• How to coach tough, haughty attitude and high ego team members?
• How to engage team members in Scrum events?
• How does the Scrum Master develop Competent Teams?

This guidebook will highlight the below chapters -- 

• Chapter I how to develop awesome communication skills?
• Chapter II how to Develop Creativity?
• Chapter III how to develop Companionable skill?
• Chapter IV how to develop a Competent team?
• Chapter V how to develop Change Management skills? 
• Chapter VI How to develop Charismatic leadership skills?
• Chapter VII How to develop Catalyst’s skill?

I have worked with hundreds of scrum masters and meticulously examine what is functioning and what is not.

and what we should improve as a scrum master to play this role better.

I have been working out all these to mature this role for myself.

This Scrum Master guidebook has recorded all the challenges a scrum master will encounter when embarking on an agile transformation journey, specifically for a large-scale agile transformation. 

This guidebook is based on my experience while exploring the Scrum Master role and the coaching assignments for agile transformation work. I recognized that all the procedures will prepare the Scrum Master for a stronger performance. At least the steps have been recommended and which will guide what can be done better. It does not aim to present a solution, but it identifies all these factors which I have come across and which has helped me to drive through the turmoil.

What will happen when we overload a motor? when the voltage is low? It cannot take the load and the coil will burn up. It is the same case when the Scrum Master is not ready, and we assign a complex project to him. He/she will burn up. Let us create a robust mechanism to handle this situation. Build strong Scrum mastery capability.

It will help all the Scrum Masters to operate in today’s complex domain.This book is coming soon for others to get benefit.....