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There's nothing like learning-in-action.¹. We just finished our planning session for our development project. I was surprised by how much time we spent defining what it meant to be done. In the LPS world we call that establishing conditions of satisfaction. But we struggle to get team members to stay in that conversation. "Just tell me what you want!" The ScrumMaster wouldn't let us move on 'til he confirmed that the whole team understood what would satisfy the Product Owner.

I'm looking forward to comprehending!

Towards the end of today's session, I noticed that our ScrumMaster frequently said, "We'll inspect and adapt." (He said it before we started the planning. I just hadn't noticed.) "Of course," I thought. The future is uncertain and unknowable. That's just what we do on (LPS) projects. But I also know it's not what is usually done on CPM-style projects. Conventional wisdom (and scheduling software) guides people to put a plan in place and stick to it. The result is project managers often try to get reality to match their plan. Doesn't work. Never did.

I really woke up to the intent of inspect and adapt when the ScrumMaster proposed that we consider moving one or more stories to a following Sprint. We had been going through estimates of the time to perform the tasks when he announced that the team didn't have enough hours in the Sprint to do all that work. I responded in a typical way, "I'll just hire another person." That statement provoked a mini lecture on how Scrum works. I can't say that I've fully comprehended. But I'm open. I'm looking forward to comprehending! And I'm looking forward to a more complete lesson on inspect and adapt.

Thursday we have our first Daily Scrum. It's scheduled for 15 minutes. Unfortunately, we're not all in one space. In Last Planner meetings we usually have the opportunity to get people to have a daily meeting standing up. It keeps the meeting moving along. I'll propose that we all stand at our desks 'til the meeting is over…unless, the ScrumMaster urges otherwise.

1. Chris Argyris claims it's the primary way we learn. See his book Knowledge for Action. [ ⇑ back ]