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The 4 Soils — Sprint Retrospective

Scrum is like a house, where the team can be safe and self-organize. They will build trust and continuous improvement. Respect Scrum team as an ecosystem will help the team evolve and build up teamwork, and the values will come to Day by Day, Sprint by Sprint.

In every Sprint, Sprint Retrospective is an excellent chance to inspect and adapt the way of working. There are many formats to help Scrum Master facilitates the Sprint Retrospective. But I always think about the format that can focus on the team environment, the ecosystem. I keep thinking and uphold that idea, and I found the inspiration from the "Parable of the Soils”. 

Borrow that parable; I create the Sprint Retrospective format “The 4 Soils”. The meaning of this format is to focus on how to help the Scrum team define what is the good/bad impact to the Scrum house. From that, the team will have the action or change to improve/maintain the ecosystem.

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Input, Output, and Outcome

Many years ago, I questioned myself about what makes a software product successful and what makes it fail. In project management, I observed that even when we deliver the project within budget, scope, and time, it still may not succeed when launching into the market.

I researched and observed what is essential to make a product successful, and I found that: one of the things that impact the success of the product is a weak connection between Input, Output, and Outcome. People are quick to focus too much on Output but less likely to focus on Outcome. Developers also fail to connect the three ideas.

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Being Open-Minded Is the Key to Scrum

With an open-mind, anything is possible. Even Scrum.
Photo credit by Unsplash/Artem Beliaikin

As a Scrum Master, I know that encouraging the development team, product owner, and organization in the adoption of Scrum is anything but not easy. It takes time (a lot of it) and patience.

And during that long journey, it's vitally important that the Scrum Master never stops improving. In fact, it's this commitment to continuous learning that helps me perform my responsibilities and enables my team to maximize the values of Scrum.

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No Transparency, No Empiricism, No Agility

If you can't see through it, it isn't transparent. #statingtheobvious

Empiricism is built by three pillars: transparency, inspection, and adaption. People used to talk about how to inspect and adapt, but they did not stress transparency. 

As we know, however, you can't stand on a three-legged table when it's missing a leg.

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Build Trust With Scrum

Are We Really a Team? 

Looking back, a couple of years ago I had a chance to work with the great team. Yes! They are a great team, but not from the beginning...that was a broken team when I came on.

  • The team used Scrum but the Transparency was lost. The Development Team hid issues from the Product Owner when he came to ask. They said: “All good!", but actually, they had a ton of bugs and impediments and couldn’t deliver working software.
  • The Development Team complained that the goal was changed frequently by the Product Owner.
  • Disappointment appeared between the Development Team and Product Owner every Sprint Review.
  • The higher manager started to doubt the product's quality and progress. Therefore, they put more and more pressure on the team and asked for more reports. This didn’t help to improve the situation but only made it more terrible.
  • Every time something went wrong, people started to complain to each other and this led to "fear mode." They started to say "I", not "We."

In a tough time, I planned to do many things to support the team, but first I asked them: "As a Team, do you trust each other?"