This Liberating Structures for Scrum meetup addressed the Daily Scrum, particularly the notion that it is barely possible to create a Liberating Structure Daily Scrum string that fits into the 15-minutes time-box of the Daily Scrum. Learn more on how to bust that myth.
Created by Keith McCandless and Henri Lipmanowicz, Liberating Structures cover a set of easy to learn, yet powerful ways to collaborate as a team—even as a (very) large team by Scrum standards—, overcoming traditional communications approaches like presentations, managed discussions, or another disorganized brainstorming at which the loudest participants tend to prevail.
Liberating Structures are well suited to improve the level of engagement among participants of Scrum events, thus stimulating the kind of outcomes that are necessary to create learning organizations. Liberating Structures also provide an excellent toolbox to handle Product Backlog refinements or improving the Definition of Done of an engineering organization.
Lastly, Liberating Structures are a great tool when Scrum Teams come together for retrospectives, self-selection of teams, or figuring out where to go during the next 24 hours; which is what the Daily Scrum is all about.
The Daily Scrum is a key inspect and adapt Scrum event supporting the Development Team on its journey to deliver a valuable, potentially shippable Product Increment at the end of the Sprint. According to the Scrum Guide:
Source: Scrum Guide.
What many people overread and thus misunderstand is the fact that the Daily Scrum is not supposed to solve all issues within the 15-minutes time-box. Its purpose is to reveal the issues so that the Development Team can act appropriately also after the Daily Scrum time-box has elapsed. So, this is where Liberating Structures kick in.
For this meetup, I chose two new LS microstructures that have the potential to support the Development Team to clear its path to achieve the Sprint Goal:
The first choice was Troika Consulting, a way to “Get Practical and Imaginative Help from Colleagues Immediately.” Troika Consulting proves to be especially helpful at sourcing support at the individual level, for example, from other Development Team members on how to solve a technical issue.
The second choice was the Discovery and Action Dialog (DAD) to “Discover, Invent, and Unleash Local Solutions to Chronic Problems.”
When the stakes are high, such as in the Megabrain.io situation, see below, some people outside the Scrum Term revert to exercising more control to deal with their perception of complexity and uncertainty. This bias for action can impede a Scrum Team achieving its Sprint Goal. Hence we explored another new Liberating Structure—the Discovery and Action Dialog (DAD)—to learn how to discover outside intervention and how to address the situation as a Scrum Team by identifying positive deviant (PD) behaviors and practices to provide solutions to real (and perceived) problems.
We used the following set of question to run the DAD on our problem at an organizational level:
Now that we added another two LS microstructures to our toolbox, we moved on to the MegaBrain.io scenario:
The Hands-on Agile meetups addressing Liberating Structures for Scrum are not created by a design team in advance as there is no standard string that we explore or follow. Designing a Liberating Structures Daily Scrum string was a task for every participant, as we split up into four teams to solve the MegaBrain.io scenario task, with each team suggesting a string and sharing it with everyone else via Shift & Share.
Given the vastly different background of the attendees of a meetup, we use a prepared narrative—the MegaBrain.io scenario—as common ground to make strings comparable:
A year ago, MegaBrain.io was a well-funded, Berlin-based hopeful in the race to improve schooling by creating tailored curricula for each student derived from an AI.
Today, MegaBrain.io’s situation is dire:
Prepare a string of LS microstructures that might support MegaBrain.io’s Development Teams in adapting their plans to achieve the Sprint Goal during the Daily Scrum.
To help with the task, a cheat sheet was issued, comprising of all previously explored Liberating Structures micro-structures:
The winning Liberating Structures Daily Scrum string started with TRIZ, followed up with either What, So What, Now What?, Troika Consulting, or Min Specs.
Do not believe that the 15-minutes time-box of the Daily Scrum rules out to apply Liberating Structures as a facilitation tool. On the contrary, once we understand that the purpose of the Daily Scrum is to reveal the issues that have the potential to prevent the Development Team from achieving the Sprint Goal, we can use Liberating Structures Daily Scrum strings to resolve these issues in a creative, effective way.
Have you used Liberating Structures to facilitate the Daily Scrum? If so, please share your findings with us in the comments.
📅 🎓 Berlin, February 18-20, 2020: Professional Scrum Training plus Liberating Structures — three immersive Days for Scrum Masters .
Liberating Structures for Scrum (1): The Sprint Retrospective.
Liberating Structures for Scrum (2): The Sprint Planning.
Liberating Structures for Scrum (3): The Product Backlog.
You can secure your seat for Scrum training classes, workshops, and meetups directly by following the corresponding link in the table below:
See all upcoming classes here.
You can book your seat for the training directly by following the corresponding links to the ticket shop. If the procurement process of your organization requires a different purchasing process, please contact Berlin Product People GmbH directly.
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