Today's blog post is brought to you by the Letter "O" for online, because we wrote this blog post together but from across the country. Sometimes you have to get creative!
Melissa: It is Friday of my 8th week on the job as the Chief ScrumMaster for Scrum Alliance. Together with Howard Sublett, our Chief Product Owner, I am blazing a trail into new territory where we embrace the Scrum values deeply and widely, eschewing the CEO role in favor of ScrumMaster and Product Owner paired leadership. Here at Scrum Alliance Unscripted, we are excited to share this journey with you through blogs and videos.
Howard: We committed in our last FB Live video to sharing something on Unscripted once a week. This is our #failurebow because it has been 3-4 weeks since our last video. Between learning, doing, meeting, and speaking, I think we have found that we need to learn to limit our own WIP. We’ll keep trying, and I’m sure we will find a cadence that works for sharing this journey with you. I promise we are committed to continuing to share.
Melissa: If you read my last blog, you know that I spent the first few weeks in a constant state of “newness”. I’m finally starting to get into the swing of things. I’ve had 1:1 introductory conversations with about ⅔ of our team, and will continue until I’ve met with everyone. I’ve learned how to use the security alarm (does that give anyone else extreme anxiety? I’m convinced I’m going to accidentally call the police every time!) I have learned a lot about how we all work together, and what our strengths and opportunities are. There is still so much more to learn.
It’s been an interesting, challenging, and fun 8 weeks. As I was thinking about what we should write for this blog, I was ruminating on the top questions we receive from people. The #1 question is, “What’s it like to work at Scrum Alliance?”. I thought that would be a good place to start. Scrum Alliance is a not-for-profit organization located in Westminster, CO. Our mission is to guide and inspire individuals, leaders, and organizations with practices, principles, and values that create workplaces that are joyful, prosperous, and sustainable.
Howard: We are almost 50 employees strong, housed in a mostly-open concept office. (Actually, two! We outgrew our first office, and the only option was to lease a second space across the parking lot. That has its own challenges.) The walls are bright with blue and green, and there is often snack food sitting around, to the glee of some and the dismay of others. (Melissa: I will own up to being the former!) We are not lacking in post-its, whiteboards, and blue tape. Our IT department has a big screen with a number of information radiators like the current sprint burndown and the number of current site visitors. Every other week, we get together for an “all hands meeting”, an amalgamation of a sprint review, department update, and a bit of fun!
Melissa: This week, we had a road-trip themed 2 day workshop where we evaluated our strategic plan and talked about the highest priorities in the next quarter. It was a fantastic exercise in team building and cross-pollination as well as priority-setting- All while blasting our favorite road trip songs. It wasn’t perfect; we learned a lot about where our team is overburdened, and how we may be context-switching too much. We accepted that we have to “stop starting and start finishing” by limiting our WIP. In addition to lots of discussion about limiting WIP, priorities, and cross-functional teams, we shared embarrassing travel photos and our favorite travel locations. Our team has traveled to so many interesting locations all over the globe.
Howard: In other news, we are still searching for an IT Director that lives and breathes the agile values and principles, and has the technical chops to take us to the next level. If that is you or someone you know, Resumes and cover letters can be submitted to me directly to [email protected]. You can check out the job at https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/1073864775/.
We are also looking for a new location (in the same general area) where we can all be under one roof again, once our current lease is up at the end of 2019. We’ve seen a couple promising places, and are looking forward to finding a new home
We are both here to serve the agile and Scrum community, and you can reach us at [email protected] or [email protected]. Please tell us what you’d like to hear us talk about here at Scrum Alliance Unscripted!