Book Image

The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook

By : Stacia Viscardi
Book Image

The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook

By: Stacia Viscardi

Overview of this book

A natural and difficult tension exists between a project team (supply) and its customer (demand); a professional ScrumMaster relaxes this tension using the Scrum framework so that the team arrives at the best possible outcome."The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook" is a practical, no-nonsense guide to helping you become an inspiring and effective ScrumMaster known for getting results.This book goes into great detail about why it seems like you're fighting traditional management culture every step of the way. You will explore the three roles of Scrum and how, working in harmony, they can deliver a product in the leanest way possible. You'll understand that even though there is no room for a project manager in Scrum, there are certain “management” aspects you should be familiar with to help you along the way. Getting a team to manage itself and take responsibility is no easy feat; this book will show you how to earn trust by displaying it and inspiring courage in a team every day."The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook" will challenge you to dig deep within yourself to improve your mindset, practices, and values in order to build and support the very best agile teams.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
Acknowledgment
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Immunity to change


I stumbled across this test in an old issue of Harvard Business Review (November 2001). Robert Kegan postulates that people are immune to change because they have a competing commitment that prevents personal change (http://hbr.org/2001/11/the-real-reason-people-wont-change/ar/2). I found this compelling and applicable. Kegan created an exercise in which he asks people to respond to the following four questions:

  • What is the new commitment that is being asked of me?

  • What am I doing, or not doing, that is keeping my stated commitment from being realized?

  • What else have I committed to that may be competing?

  • What big assumptions have I made about the new commitment?

I found this interesting because sometimes the competing commitment feels like a violation of a value of loyalty or personal dedication to another person. Other times, it can be an intrapersonal conflict—low self-esteem, self-doubt, and so on. For example, a tester on a new Scrum team, Jane, was asked to work more...