Sean Kenefick

I just read Mike Cohn’s interesting article about rotating the ScrumMaster role…  As he states (and I agree) that the role is too pivotal to rotate permanently, it might be an interesting way for developers to see what the job entails and to limit the “management” feeling that can end up developing.

It’s an interesting perspective and one I’ve talked about with clients in a slightly different capacity.

As we’re probably all aware, waterfall development relies on functional teams working at different times, often in their own silos.  Agile attempts to break down some of these silos and help the team embrace a more collaborative multi-functional environment .  That cultural change can be pretty daunting — often times, the roles have seen each other as “the enemy” for years.  Breaking down the walls — while to everyone’s benefit — rarely happens overnight.

Enter the “exchange program.”  When clients tell me that they’re interesting in trying out agile or DevOps, I often recommend that they first create an exchange program where the different roles try the others out for a couple of days, both to understand the challenges the other roles face and to get better acquainted with the people in the group.  For instance, infrastructure folks may sit in with developers, watch them collaborate, see why they choose technologies.  Developers may become testers or work with the operational folks to maintain and manage releases for production systems.  Business analysts might try out testing.  Just for a while.

It’s hard to resent someone you respect.  It’s hard to throw inadequate code over the wall to people you like.  It makes you think about the tedious processes you enforce when you see your friends unhappily fulfill them.  Each functional group member may not have the same skills, but it’s still helpful just to sit and see how the proverbial sausage gets made.

If the teams end up mutating into agile, great!  You’ve had a head start.  If not, your folks have gotten to know each other and perhaps you can keep that good will going.  Sure, it can’t happen all at once — but perhaps team members do a two day exchange once or twice a year.  Obviously, this gets a lot more difficult — and all the more helpful — when functional teams are split across towns, continents or the world.

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