Why should anybody listen to you?

I have recently read a blog written by a scrum master who left an organisation prematurely due to his new colleagues being unwilling to follow his advice in the first instance. I find this bizarre.

What's more is that this person goes on later in the blog to talk about how the project failed to deliver on time and had the organisation listened to him, this would not have happened.

I would say that the business isn't the only failure in this.

If you walk into an organisation and walk out in a huff because nobody was interested in the 50 changes that you wanted to make in the first 2 weeks, then you will find yourself walking out of most of your positions.

I would never expect any organisation to genuinely take on my advice and make big changes to their ways of working until I have earnt a level of trust and respect. I need credibility. We must remember that when you enter an organisation, the majority of, if any, of your new colleague's have never worked with you before. If you get it wrong, it can have a huge impact on an organisations ability to deliver.

The importance of credibility

OK, confession.......I was once a double glazing salesman (I'm sure many of my colleague's, past and present, are reading this now thinking of how this makes perfect sense) .

I started in double glazing sales working at a nationally recognised brand and after a period of difficulty, I eventually became a pretty good salesman. I actually won awards and earnt promotion.

I would always pitch to the customers about how we were a recognised brand and could not be compared to "Harry and Tommy" down the street. Our product was much more expensive than most, likely double.

After a time there, I was head hunted by another firm, a local firm who sold their product at half the price. I was rubbing my hands when thinking about how much easier it would be to sell the product but.....exactly the opposite happened. I was there for around 3 months and barely sold a thing. I feel the reason for this was the lack of credibility that this firm had, or to put it better, I put my success in the previous national firm down the the strong credibility that they had. People will only buy if they trust you and people were much more willing to trust a firm with good credibility.

The same is true for me as a scrum master. I have to earn some credibility to be trusted and to do this, I must show improvements. I must deliver.

You MUST deliver.....Together

The question is, how do I invoke change?.....the answer is simple and complex at the same time. It involves building relationships, becoming part of the team and the culture and demonstrating improvements incrementally, sometimes through small changes at first. This is a hard balance to get right.

Ultimately, you must deliver.....What you do may not be perfect, or even great, but you must show improvements and you must take this journey with the people you are working with. If you are humble and work with other talented people, you will also find yourself learning in the process, which is always good.....but you MUST deliver.

My philosophy on delivery is simple...do what makes sense. I'm going to cut the BS here. If you are an agile/scrum purist, you will not find many (if any) positions that will live up to your high expectations. My previous experience in leadership and software delivery is a big part of what guides me on a daily basis. This is not something you can learn on your CSM. When to triage, when to re-prioritise, how to track dependencies, how to deal with estimation issues or requirements that lack detail, release strategy....this list goes on...... None of this stuff is taught on your CSM and are not even often mentioned in job descriptions for scrum masters, but if you want to make improvements quickly, you're probably going to need a high level of experience in these areas.

Given you have this experience, should you enter an organisation and look to change everything straight away? No, you need to understand why. It is your role to coach and evolve the process and ways of working over time. Being a scrum master and working within the scrum framework, sometimes you may need to bend the framework but don't ever sacrifice delivery for process, you can do both, it is an evolution. When people see success and you have built relationships, your voice will become stronger. You will have gained credibility.

There is also a good chance that you work with other dedicated and experienced professionals and there is a good reason why they may work differently to how you have seen success previously. If you listen to your colleague's and work together, you will always come out a better version of yourself then when you started and the chances are that the organisation will also improve and you will have gained the trust and respect that you need to continue the journey with your colleague's.

Actual results = success. If you can demonstrate success and become part of the team, you don't need to walk away, you can take a more enjoyable and beneficial journey for all involved together.

Is there a template?

No, there is not. One of your goals should be to make things consistent but people are not all the same and neither is the nature of the work. Again, this is an evolution. You may have some teams that have great communication, some with greater skills, some who have performance issues, some teams may be dealing with bigger and more complex solutions than other teams, PO's may work differently. How you evolve these teams may be completely different, but you cant just set out a template for success and expect everybody to just follow, this isn't how it works. So if you start in a new position and expect this straight away, then you aren't doing your job from the start.

I have recently started a new position and enjoyed every second of working with, and learning from other people, and I genuinely hope that I have passed on some of my experience.

Show that you can be trusted, earn respect and work with, not against your new colleague's.

So...where does scrum come into this

The goal is to continually improve and while delivering quality software is the golden goose, the best way to do this is to work to agile principles. Just because it doesn't start perfect and there will always be some deviations, it doesn't mean that you don't aim for the gold standard. It just isn't something that is done overnight. As a scrum master, you are ultimately there to deliver. It is not good enough just coaching scrum with no results BUT transforming delivery squads into self managing scrum teams achieves that goal, you just need to be able to improve while you are reaching for your goal. Its ironic that the two go hand in hand because so many just have scrum at mind. It is when you focus on both that you truly become agile.

In a perfect world, we would have time to show our worth but if we haven't shown improvements quickly, and if we haven't delivered, then why would anybody listen to us.