Scrum Master: “Are you sure it’s going to take this long? The product owner wants it done in the next Sprint and I already told her it won’t be a problem.”
I have 3 issues with this kind of statement. First, it seems that the Scrum Master is acting as the intermediary between the Product Owner and the Scrum Development team. Second, the Scrum Master is making commitments on behalf of the team. Third, the Scrum Master is pressuring the team on their estimates.
As a ScrumMaster, your role is to get the Product Owner to communicate and collaborate directly with the Scrum Development team and not be the go-between. So as a ScrumMaster you should not be relaying the product owner needs to the team or making promises on behalf of the development team to the product owner. Instead, you need to ensure that the development team hears directly from the Product Owner and understands the needs, importance, and business case of a user story. Then have the development team and Product Owner negotiate and collaborate to figure out what can be accomplished within the timebox and based on any upcoming deadlines. No one can pressure the development team on the estimates. The team is empowered to determine how long something is going to take and how much of it they can take on in each Sprint. We can however negotiate on the scope of a feature or requirement to get the most valuable part of it out sooner and then iterate and increment to get other aspects delivered later.
Remember the Agile values and principles. In particular, “Customer collaboration over Contract Negotiation”, and “Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.”
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – Developers and Deliverables
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – Are You Sure It’s Going to Take this Long?
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – The BAs are Holding Us Back!
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – Yes, We Are a Self-organizing Team
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – Assigning Points to Everything
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – Isn’t Scrum Just a Team Level Thing?
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – The Code Freeze
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – Refining the upcoming 8 Sprints?
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – Of Course We Are Agile!
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – I’m Responsible for Writing User Stories
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – Scrum Master Canceling the Daily Scrum
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – The Sprint was a Colossal Failure
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – When is Sprint Planning?
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – Canceling the Sprint Retrospective
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – Product Owner Missing Sprint Planning?
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – Extending the Sprint
- Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – I’m the Product Owner and Scrum Master