Who should act as a wise fool in Scrum Team and when?
Recently I had a chance to re-read a book by Jeff Sutherland called Scrum: the art of doing twice the work in half the time. It had a section which made me think and I decided to share my opinion with you. This book is really interesting — recommend reading it for career and personal life.
In chapter seven of the book, Jeff writes about Pop the Happy Bubble and explained it by pointing out to the story which we are all familiar with — The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen. I believe everyone knows about the story, so I am not going to repeat it.
Referring to the topic, this question will arise for you, why we need someone play wise fool role in Scrum team? Although the word wise fool is contradictory, the answer is in the nature of the Wise Fool role. Nurture the position of the wise fool, who can easily throw up inconvenient truths. When it comes to practical life, how can someone be wise at the same time and still a fool? To answer this question, I wish to throw your attention to the 10 Awesome Ways to Use the Fool Archetype to Increase Your Success! by Emma-Louise when she talks about the Strengths of the (Wise) Fool Archetype which are:
1. A lack of concern about what other people think of them.
2. Trusting the process.
3. They create their own rules.
Are these familiar with you? Referring to The Scrum Guide (November 2017) “Scrum is founded on empirical process control theory or empiricism. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is known. Three pillars uphold every implementation of empirical process control: transparency, inspection, and adaptation.”. Also, one of the most important characteristics of the Development Team is Self-organizing. As you can see “A lack of concern about what other people think of them” and “Trusting the process” are covered by one of the Scrum pillars, which is transparency, and “They create their own rules” is covered by Self-organizing characteristics of the Development Team.
Being a wise fool helps Scrum Team to solve issues (aiming to adaptation and improvement) by approaching them from a different, uncommon viewpoint. You may think the best persons in Scrum Team for acting as a wise fool role are probably the Scrum Master, Product Owner or even Agile Coach. Although these roles are unique in that they are both objective and neutral and can see the entire picture, based on The Scrum Guide (November 2017) “accountability belongs to the Development Team as a whole.”. Referring to the Are you a wise fool? By Robert Drury, I believe all Scrum Squad needs “Someone with enough knowledge to have wisdom on the subject but with enough foolishness to be able to ask the ‘stupid’ questions.”. The key point is that even the wise fool person knows the solution(s); he/she must not offer the solution(s) because this can break the team’s self-organization. To stop this the wise fool person should use Elenchus questioning.
From my point of view and based on my experience, each Scrum Team member must act as a wise fool. Although questioning can happen in all Scrum ceremonies, I think the best event for having wise fool person in Scrum team is in the Retrospective meeting. Regarding The Scrum Guide (November 2017), “The Sprint Retrospective is an opportunity for the Scrum Team to inspect itself and create a plan for improvements to be enacted during the next Sprint.”.
A good Scrum Master will support team that enters this state and question how they can improve. One of the techniques which Scrum Master can use to have effective Retrospective is “5 Whys”.
Surely, being a wise fool is a powerful act in Scrum because it allows the Scrum Team to see others or situations considering Scrum Values.
Off the record, next time in the Sprint Retrospective meeting try to be WISE FOOL.
Please share your thoughts with me on this.
