January 16, 2025 • 32 mins
In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Dave West sits down with Sander Dur and Ryan Brook, authors of Solving for Value: A Journey of Ambition and Stupidity. This unique "bar book" combines a fictional story with actionable insights and real-world advice on Scrum and agility. The authors discuss the importance of prioritizing value over process, self-management, and transparency while highlighting common anti-patterns like mindless Scrum adoption, flawed scaling efforts, and rigid roadmaps. They also share their collaborative, iterative writing process and how humor plays a crucial role in connecting with readers. Tune in for an engaging conversation that blends empathy, humor, and practical guidance for tackling Scrum challenges.
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ScrumOrg Marketing (00:00):
Music.
(00:00):
Welcome to the scrum.orgcommunity podcast, a podcast
(00:04):
from the home of Scrum. In thispodcast, we feature professional
scrum trainers and other scrumpractitioners sharing their
stories and experiences to helplearn from the experience of
others. We hope you enjoy thisepisode.
Dave West (00:20):
Hello and welcome to the scrum.org community podcast.
I'm your host. Dave West, CEO,here@scrum.org in today's
podcast, we're lucky enough totalk to two authors of a new
book on Scrum and agility. Thebook's title is solving for
value, a journey of ambition andstupidity, by sandida and Ryan
(00:41):
Brooke, welcome to the podcast.
Sandra and Ryan. Thanks forhaving us to be here. It's great
to have you in this sort offestive season, just for the for
the listeners, you don't get thebenefit of this, or maybe, maybe
you've seen a picture of this,but Ryan is wearing his
Christmas sweater or jumper, asI meant to say, so, so that that
obviously provides you with somecontext as he answers these
(01:06):
questions and and actually, I'dlike to start with you, Ryan, if
you don't mind, of course. Socan you tell the listeners about
this, this new book, you know,sort of give, give the overview,
give the the thing you get onthe back as it were,
Ryan Brook (01:21):
yeah, sure. So what we try to do with this book was
try to create something a littlebit different. So what we've got
is, kind of, it's a book of twohalves. We have, we have our
story, our kind of, when weinitially started, it was very
Phoenix Project like it, wewanted a story about a
fictitious organization calledmagnum opus that would allow us,
as commentators looking at thisto be able to well, offer
(01:44):
advice, offer common pitfallsand anti patterns. So you kind
of read it in two ways. Itstarts out with a story, and
then Sanda and I will come in asthe authors and comment on that
story. Say good things, say badthings, but more importantly,
offer practices and improvementsto try and help you. Sanda has a
wonderful word for it. He callsit a bar book. You know, it's a
(02:06):
as if you were sat next to us atthe bar, chatting along with us.
That's kind of what the book isstyled as, that sounds,
Dave West (02:13):
that sounds awesome and anti patterns. Because, from
my experience, I spent a lot oftime, as I said in the sort of
intro to the book, or theforward, going around talking to
organizations doing scrumm andagile, and trying these
different ways of working. Andthere's a lot of examples of
anti patterns that we see overand over again. So so Sanda, I
(02:37):
don't mean to be a cynic here,but there's a lot of agile books
around and, you know, even someof them written by myself. So
gosh, yeah, that they're prettyawful, but there's a lot of
really good ones as well. So whydo we need another agile book?
Sander Dur (02:59):
Well, one of the main things to read this book is
obviously because you wrote theforward to begin with.
Dave West (03:05):
There is that, yes, exactly. Now, the
Sander Dur (03:08):
thing that we saw in the market here is, like Ryan
said, we started differentlythan we ended up with. We
started from scrum masterperspective. But we also know is
that the scrum that the marketat large is shifting more from a
framework oriented mindset tomore of a product oriented
mindset. That's where we diveinto as well. Like Scrum is
(03:29):
still super important. Scrum isreally important, but it's the
means to the end, right? It'snot necessarily the end state,
and that's one of thosedysfunctions that we started to
see in one of the anti patterns,and also to combine that
together with the bar book Scrumis super important, but it's
also so misunderstood in manycases. And that's where we
wanted to dive in thesepractices and what we can do
(03:51):
with them, the anti patterns,and what we have done in our in
our practice to to resolve thesekind of anti patterns.
Dave West (04:00):
Yeah, I so I was fortunate for the listeners to
read this book very early on,and it made me chuckle a lot,
which is something I do want tocome to in a second. There's a
lot of lot of jokes throughoutwhich made me smile. It
definitely felt like I was at apub with Ryan and Sander talking
(04:22):
about my organization or thechallenges that I have. But the
the other thing that I reallyliked about this book, and the
thing that I think makes itspecial, which you sort of
mentioned, was the focus onvalue. I know it's in the title,
and it's very easy to title thebook and then completely forget
it when you've when you'vewritten, when you write it. But
the ultimate that this isn'tabout Scrum. I mean, it is, or
(04:45):
isn't about agile. It is, but itisn't. It's about why. It's
about the outcomes that scrumprovides. And when you don't do
one of these things in Scrum,maybe it's a daily maybe it's,
you know, you know, have asprint goal. Maybe. It's
whatever those things are. Thisis the impact in terms of the
outcome, not that you haven'tdone it. This is, this is the
(05:07):
impact to your organization.
This is why you won't findvalue. So so easy. Does that
really summarize sanda? Youknow, do you think that's
summarizes your thoughts as youwere writing this book,
Sander Dur (05:22):
absolutely that, and it's that, combined with the
fact that a lot of practitionersstruggle to be in these kind of
situations, it takes a lot ofperseverance, and that's why we
wanted to provide the empathy tothe practitioners, right? And
also to get back to what scrumtries to do is to bring the
(05:43):
transparency, inspection,adaptation, having a good, hard,
critical look and the courage tobe transparent about those kind
of things. And we felt that thatis missing in a lot of
organizations, so we want tobring that back, but also let
the reader know that you're notalone in these kind of these
kind of challenges. Yeah, I
Ryan Brook (06:00):
think that that thing that Sanders just hit on
there, that empathy, thatfeeling alone, we often see
Scrum Masters in organizations,almost, well, sadly, sometimes
quite piecemeal. You know,you're in a large area with only
maybe one or two people, and theability to kind of have that
conversation with with a book,in this case, to say you're not
alone. We've been there.
Sometimes it's just reallycrappy. But however experienced
(06:22):
you are, whatever organizationyou're working within, it's just
about taking one foot in frontof another and seeing if you can
get better tomorrow, exactly.
Sander Dur (06:33):
And ultimately, we want to read there to become
better, in getting that valueand delivering that value that
we all strive for. Yeah,
Dave West (06:41):
it kind of reminded me why I'm in this role,
actually, which is, which isbizarre that it would but, you
know, I was as I was reading thebook, and, you know, laughing at
some of the jokes, it remindedme there's a heavy emphasis on
self management, a heavyemphasis on taking ownership in
(07:02):
the context of business value,etc. And you know, part of the
reason why I love Scrum is thatit's about empowering teams to
deliver value. And the role of ascrum master, Agile coach,
Delivery Manager, whatever thattitle is, doesn't really matter.
That's your job. It's to get thebest out of everybody in pursuit
(07:22):
of the goal that you're at. Andthat means contribution. That
means self management, selforganization, empowerment, those
things and that that's heavilytalked about in the in the book,
which I was I It wasn't what Iwas expecting and it but it
really did remind me why, whyscrum so, so important. I
Ryan Brook (07:43):
think one of the things Sandra and I have tried
to do throughout the book is wekeep coming back to that word of
anti patterns that we'veactually gone out on the circuit
a little bit and tried todeliver a talk about the 10
common dysfunctions, 10 lies.
We're calling them, that almostorganizations are telling
themselves. And you kind of seepeople in the comments, and
afterwards, they'll message uson LinkedIn, and they'll,
they'll chuckled, but also havegone, do you know what?
Sometimes, unless you, unlessyou slap yourself in the face
(08:05):
with it, you almost don'tacknowledge these issues, these
anti patterns. So this book isalmost like your guide. Yes,
it's about value, yes, it'sabout self management, but it's,
it's a self reflection tool,really, to say, Do you know
what? That's not okay. How do wetake a step forward?
Dave West (08:23):
So give me an example of one of the anti patterns. Oh,
Ryan Brook (08:26):
Santa, take a pick.
You can. You can pick firstSure.
Sander Dur (08:29):
Let's start with one of the main ones where it
actually starts to go wrong inmany organizations, is that
Scrum, or any you can replacethis with any kind of framework
or methodology, whatever youwant, but it's picked
mindlessly, right? It's, we'regoing to do Scrum because we so
see so many linked influencersdo this kind of thing. There's
so much going on. It soundedcool at this party. No one talks
(08:52):
about Scrum at parties, but, youknow, it sounded cool where I
heard it. And they mindlesslystart running this. And they
don't think about, what kind ofproblem do we really have, what
kind of solutions do we have tothat might fit that problem,
that we can actually, you know,move to mitigate that. And why
might scrum be one of thosethings? And if we're going to do
(09:12):
Scrum, what kind oforganizational changes do we
need to make in order to makethat work? And these steps are
usually skipped immediately.
Scrum is treated like HarryPotter's magic wand, the magic
salvation of everything,expecting that all the the
problems and dysfunctions aremagically going to be resolved.
And that's just not the case.
(09:32):
Yet this that's how it's beingtreated. That's where we want to
shine a little light on thesekind of dysfunctions. It
Dave West (09:39):
that definitely is an empty pattern I see all the
time, and by the way, I don'ttotally hate it, because
obviously they then go on scrumtraining, and that's great, and
that helps pay my mortgage, so Iappreciate it. However, the
reality is that if you adoptsomething without understanding.
(10:00):
The why, which is very differentfrom traditional engineering
processes the IndustrialRevolution, which was just do
this worry. Don't worry aboutthe system. Don't worry about
the why. Just do that widget,really, really, really well and
that. But scrum isn't that.
Scrum is you have to understandthe context. You have to
appreciate the why, you have tounderstand the impact, the
(10:23):
organizational capability tosupport it, and and if those
things aren't necessarily rightor aligned, or the motivation
isn't correct, you know, if itisn't, Scrum isn't about
delivering things faster. You dodeliver things faster, but it's
about delivering value better.
Blah, blah, blah, then youultimately are in trouble. So
that's a really, really greatdysfunction. Ryan hit me up with
(10:45):
another one. Man, oh,
Ryan Brook (10:48):
what do we want to go for? Well, the absolute need
to scale in a lot oforganizations, and I'm purposely
being vague with the word scale.
I know it's like a red rag to alot of bull balls in the Agile
community, but what we see in alot of organizations is, you
know, well, scaling, or descaling, we talk about in the
book, but scaling particularlyas a problem, because it's their
(11:09):
inability to rationalize aproduct backlog and inability to
pick and so what they try and dois try and put loads of teams on
loads of products. And actually,they haven't even got the base
building blocks right. First,it's, do you know what? It's not
even just taking a problem. It'staking a problem and timing it
by 10. And that's something wesee consistently in
(11:32):
organizations, because theybelieve that it's like buying
one simple solution off theshelf, one thing to manage a
scaled implementation versus 10smaller ones. Whereas we all
know that those 10 smaller onesare probably easier to manage
than one large one, and that'ssomething we see all the time.
Dave West (11:52):
Yeah, and do you think that organizations scale?
Because you know that, becausethat historically, that's the
way in which success hascreated, you know, with that
sort of factory mentality thatyou know soon as let's, let's,
let's, let's, add 100 people tothis, when in doubt, add
(12:12):
somebody else. Do you think it'sbecause of that, or do you think
it's because scale means power,authority, status? Well,
Sander Dur (12:21):
and they already have so many people in the
organization that they need tokeep busy, right? So we're just
going to slap a slightframework, a scaling framework,
on it, without even startingwith the basis, with a proper
foundation. Now here's a here'sa nice scaling framework that we
just took off Brian shelf, andnow we're going to apply that
across a multi 100 people. Andgood luck. Now, we expect you to
do the right thing right rightaway, as soon as possible. Yeah?
Dave West (12:44):
And I Yeah. I mean, the Twitter example is an
example of an organ, yeah, whenElon Musk came to Twitter, and I
know that's, you know, there'slots of negative stuff about
Elon at the moment, but, but onething that's really interesting
in terms of the impact that hehad at Twitter in material of
the fact that you know yourexperience of Twitter, but
(13:06):
ultimately they're deliveringmore features now with
significantly less people,they're doing more because, you
know, he instantly reduced theirheadcount significantly. And
rumor has it, he's going to tryto do that with the US
government next, but we'll seehow that goes. But so don't
scale too soon. Get the basicsin place. Scale value, not, not,
(13:30):
not processes, you know, thosesort of, yeah, that makes, makes
a lot, lot of sense. How aboutanother one? This is awesome.
I'm I, even though I read manyof these things, it's sort of
bringing it all back. Now.
Sanda, have you got one that youwould like?
Sander Dur (13:48):
This one is right up Ryan's alley as well. Road maps
are just fixed to follow like ifwhat are you going to what are
you going to eat for dinner?
June, 26 2025 I was
Dave West (14:01):
thinking I was going to have a maybe an Indian, yeah,
I think, you know, ashwari Naan.
Oh, are you not meant to planthat far in advance? Sandra, is
that what you're saying? How
Sander Dur (14:15):
high is the probability that that line is
going to change? It's somethingexactly with something
arbitrary, exactly, we alwayscall roadmaps, the plan to
deviate from and settingsomething in stone just does not
make sense at all, especially ifyou go beyond the even the
(14:36):
closed realm. Brian, what do youthink? Yeah, roadmaps
Ryan Brook (14:39):
are like. It's something that really frustrates
me, because typically we seeroad maps on a confluence page
or on a PowerPoint slide. Theygo from left to right. They've
got milestones on them, andeveryone views them as this
gospel, but we all know theminute that that document gets
emailed out, it's out of date,and it's just incredibly
frustrating that it's thentreated as some. You know, it's
(15:00):
put in p6 or it's put in somesort of planning tool, and then
it's almost ticked off againststyle. You know, hey, why don't
we just try and do a road map inconcentric circles? Now, is in
the middle. Next is a little bitout there with four or five
things in something. One ofthese things might be able to
come into the now, but we justdon't know. I can't plan two
weeks ahead. My teams can't plantwo weeks ahead. So why the hell
(15:23):
are they trying to plan a yearfive years ahead, with putting
dates on it at the same time?
It's just frustrating.
Dave West (15:29):
But surely you have to balance the desire by, you
know, executives like that, youknow, like, like me, I'm
pretending to be one at themoment the because we want to be
able to forecast, becausethere's a lot of other moving
parts inside, you know, whetherit's commitments to partners,
(15:50):
whether it's commitments to thestreet, whether it's how do we,
how do we balance that? And Iknow you talked a little bit
about that in the book, so howdo you, how did you How would
you recommend we balance theneed for flexibility with the
need for for for be able topredict the future a little bit?
Ryan Brook (16:11):
I think you kind of addressed it in your answer.
There you we talk about roadmapsbeing fixed as the anti pattern.
Some of it's a culture and aknowledge issue when we publish
this and we don't say this iswhat we will do. Yes, we need to
forecast. We need to give peoplea vision, a level of
transparency over what thefuture looks like. But also,
there needs to almost be thatcaveat. I wish roadmaps just
(16:33):
came with a little TLDR at thebottom that says this is
probably already wrong, but it,but it's, it's like a product
owner being transparent withtheir decisions in a product
backlog. It's a way of showingpositive intent and purpose. So
I think that is great. Road mapsare a wonderful tool, but they
have a massive drawback whenthey're considered as
commitments rather thanforecasts.
Dave West (16:55):
And obviously there's something about there's some
things we can predict andthere's some things that we
can't. And it's knowing, like wecan predict that we're going to
release the product on thatdate. We just can't predict
exactly what's going to be init. Or maybe you know, and it's
balancing that kind of givingthat level of knowledge. It's
(17:15):
funny whether you know, whetherreports are increasingly wrong
at the moment in the US anyway.
But wouldn't it be nicesometimes they're right, and
that's because they have a highamount, like not much is
changing the jet streams in thesame position, etc. I would love
that that that fidelity to bereported in the Reva report.
(17:36):
This is a high likelihood ofsuccess. This is a low
likelihood of success, as I'mplanning my barbecue or my, you
know, or my kids birthday partyoutside. And I think that road
maps would benefit from some ofthat, you know, the stuff that
we and as soon as we don't knowsomething, then we highlight the
(17:56):
fact and and the like I don'tknow, Sanda, you, you got some
strong opinions on road maps?
Sander Dur (18:04):
Yeah, I'm, I'm also curious, from your perspective
as one of those executives, howdid you deal? How did your road
map change just prior to COVID?
Dave West (18:14):
Oh, fundamentally.
So, it's so funny. So I we usedto draw it. And I know Ryan,
you. I know I know we should besmarter. I apologize to the
audience here, however, youknow, Cobblers, children and all
that. Anyway, so, so we had onmy whiteboard in my office. I
had a plan for the next year,broadly and yes, it was more
(18:36):
goal oriented. It was less out,you know, it was very outcome,
very same. So it was good, youknow, we had some some plans,
and of which, supporting, youknow, sort of like instructor
led online training was not onthat plan. I tried to implement
some ideas around that earlier.
(18:57):
Got massive pushback, given up.
Would be a good way ofdescribing my behaviors. And so
we wasn't there. So March 13, itwas a Friday, I was sitting in
the office with this huge plan,and that was the last day I was
in the office. Andfundamentally, we radically
changed how what we were doing,in terms of the goals that we
were trying to achieve, and howfrequently we reviewed our plan
(19:21):
and our progress against it. Soit fundamentally changed, and we
were doing well. Every otherweek we were replanning the
order of the classes were goingto be available, the you know,
what, how we were supporting,the how face to faces were going
to happen, you know, weren'tvirtual, you know, and, and it
(19:42):
was very dynamic, incrediblystressful, but wasn't the actual
work wasn't actually stressful.
It's funny, it was more theenvironment, because there were
just so many unknowns outside ofwork as well. You know, the
safety. My family and all ofthose sort of things that was
(20:02):
actually more stressful than theactual work. The work was
actually kind of fun, and wedelivered classes very quickly,
and then after three months of,you know, not being able to
deliver it particularlysuccessfully, or having
challenges and learning, we thenit just was, went Gangbuster. So
I guess, yeah,
Sander Dur (20:21):
that's the thing, right? That's one of those
coming back to road maps, butapplies to pretty much all of
the dysfunctions and antipatterns we hear so often. Now,
we can do that here. When Iasked my manager the week
before, just prior to the firstlockdown, like, can I work from
home? Nah, we don't have theinfrastructure. We can't do
that. We don't have thoseoptions. You know, it's going to
(20:44):
take at least half year ofinvestment, so we're not going
to do that. But all of a sudden,these circumstances change. Now
you have the burning platform tochange, and all of a sudden, fam
people can do it within a week.
Everyone's working from home ina week. So it's creating that,
that necessity for people tofind the creativity to solve
these kind of problems. And Ithink that's that's one of the
things that many organizationsshould come back to provide the
(21:06):
sandbox for people to to operatewithin, right? I think that's
one of the things that we'velost over time, is playing
around in that sandbox. I'm notsaying like a physical sandbox,
but there was a parallel to thephysical sandbox when we were a
kid, because those sandboxesworld were the realm of
opportunities. The imaginationwas limitless. And then after we
(21:29):
started moving more and moreinto the corporate world, how,
the why and the creativity got,you know, dragged out. And I
think we need to put that moreback into into practice. I
Dave West (21:44):
100% well that, as I say, that's the reason why I'm
so excited about Scrum. Over thelast 10 years, as I've been CEO
of scrum.org that was reason whyI joined scrum.org because I
ultimately believe in empoweringpeople to have ownership of
their sandbox and encouragingthem to do creative work instead
of just work and, and I think wecan change the world if we do
(22:08):
that and and at the very least,get happier people, which would
be nice, right? That would be agreat step in the right
direction. So I'm curious, youknow, as we've been talking
about the anti patterns we'vebeen talking about this, this
pro I'm curious about your theprocess, you know, your writing
process and journey on thisbook. I hate to say this, but I
(22:30):
don't strike Sander inparticular. Doesn't strike me as
a book writer. You know, youstrike me very much as a let's
get stuff done. Let's get abunch of people together. Let's
cause some chaos in a nice,positive, structured way, and
then make some changes. Andmagic happens. Ryan, you're a
little bit more student, youknow, organized and systematic
(22:53):
and the like they were about.
Ryan Brook (22:55):
You're about to eat your hat. Dave, when you fit,
when you finish your question,
Dave West (22:58):
oh, I was gonna say the process. How did this
journey happen? And, yeah, Ialways love a good hat eating.
I'm
Sander Dur (23:04):
gonna let my evil twin sister answer this question
Ryan Brook (23:08):
that's not helpful on a on an audio only podcast,
the fact that we look verysimilar.
Dave West (23:14):
You do look a little bit similar, I guess so. To
answer your
Ryan Brook (23:17):
question, how did we go about it? We kind of decided
that we wanted to try and breakdown some of the stereotypes of
books. Particularly, they justfeel quite dry, you know, you
you buy one same contentproduced in a different way. And
we just thought, what could wedo? So we knocked up a few
ideas, good old sticky notes andsome online collaboration. And
(23:37):
we tried to come up with atitle, but we couldn't. So we
just started writing. We startedputting out an increment.
Sander, very luckily, has a veryhelpful discord community where
we were releasing chaptersincrementally getting feedback.
What did we think? And once wefelt like we kind of had that, I
guess we call it a track, thetrack of value that we were
aiming for, we then kind of wentheads down. It took us a long
(24:01):
time to get going. I You, Imean, so I'm very grateful you
called me studious. Butactually, Sanda was the one
driving this whole thing. He wasthe one whipping me to get
going. And it was challenging.
Writing a book is, I mean, youknow, Dave, but 50% of it is
actually writing the words, andthen it's the marketing, the IP
ends, the barcodes, the editing,the proofreading, the the front
(24:22):
cover, the name, oh my god,coming up with a name, I said to
Sander in the dedication, we arenever doing this again, and yet,
we already are, aren't we?
Sander, yeah,
Sander Dur (24:34):
the next book is already in the works. Luckily,
we just spoke to Dan Pink, andwe have, we're authorized to use
his work as well to to get sometraction in there. So that's
awesome. Oh,
Dave West (24:45):
autonomy, mastery, purpose is always, always fun,
right? The So, yeah, the theprocess of writing a book is, is
always very interesting. Andit's, it's great that you
highlighted a couple of thingsthat I think that that
traditional publishing. Housesto have a real challenge with
which is this incremental, youknow, sort of like
experimentation approach. Andobviously, Sanda has a great
(25:08):
discord community that you canleverage and get that feedback
as you inspect and adapt thejourney that that you're that
you're on. That was, that wasinteresting, Sanda, what was
your experience of writing this
Sander Dur (25:23):
book? Well, one of the first things, so I started
writing this book, I asked Ryanto be my co author, because I'm
terrible at really wrappingthings up. And he's like, South
bar calls at the account tobuild a buddy, and he was my
account to build a buddy. So,you know, there's always someone
to fall back on. And I startwith with the idea of of calling
the company, Mack mope isapproach. Ryan said, This is
what I want to do. Mac mope isthe best ever work. That that's
(25:47):
what it means in Latin. And thenI found out that he studied
Latin, and then immediately Igot that back into my face. Now
it means greatest work. Youknow, it's that kind of stuff
that I would have never foundout if I didn't work with with
Ryan. But also we try to eat ourown dog food. We try to do this
in a scrum way, you know, dothis iteratively, incrementally,
in sprints. Turns out, sprintsare not the Scrum is not the
(26:12):
right way to write a book, whichis interesting because it's not.
It doesn't have that level ofcomplexity that you would need
to make scrum actually work,right? It's we, we needlessly
over complicated that in thatsense. But we learned so much
because we self published for avariety of reasons. So then,
indeed, it's writing the words.
But then you also dive into, howdoes the publication work? What
(26:35):
do you need to pay attention to?
How do you style the book,making sure that there's
sufficient spacing in between,switching the page numbers from
left and right. It's all thesesmall details that you would
never notice if you're justchugging out the words,
Dave West (26:51):
yeah, it is, yeah.
It's interesting. You said thatScrum is not necessarily right
for writing books. I thinkthere's definitely some elements
of Scrum, particularly whenyou're trying to discover the
journey, the sort of crux of thebook, that experimentation and
rapid delivery and feedback. Ithink it works perfectly. I
think towards the, you know, asas a book becomes a formed
thing, then it becomes more ofit's a complicated, maybe even a
(27:16):
simple, problem that. And thenit is really sort of like just
getting tasks done, learningwhat they, you know, learning
what that tasks are like buyingan ISBN, because you have to buy
them, which I never reallyunderstood until, you know,
being involved a little bit inbook publishing. So the last
thing I just want to touch onbefore, we leave, and this has
(27:39):
been a really thank you fortaking the time. Today is the
humor, the scrum dad jokes. Iknow both of you are funny but
but being funny in real life andbeing funny on the page aren't
necessarily the same thing. Itwas a bit of a risk. Wasn't it
(28:01):
being humorous in a book becauseof the way in which, you know,
it's like being humorous on onTwitter or on Slack, it can flat
very quickly, right? Why did youdecide to I mean, I it has
worked. So for our listeners,you know, get if you get the
opportunity to read this book,and I recommend you do it
(28:21):
actually does work. Some of themyou're just like, you're
groaning, but some of themactually make you giggle a
little bit. So
Unknown (28:31):
yeah, it has worked, but it's a bit of a risk. Why
did you decide to do it?
Ryan Brook (28:37):
Because no one wants to write a book. That is really,
really hard to do. We wanted towrite a book for us to read.
This was never about revenue.
This was never about marketingor branding. The cynics can
disagree, but this was somethingthat we went you know what? I
would want to read this book,and when I read things, I want
to be chuckling along. You can'tdo boring, bland empathy. You
(28:58):
need to be like, Do you knowwhat we've been there. And also,
humor is our way of coping withthings and kind of accepting
that things aren't perfect. Andso, yeah, you know, it was a bit
of a risk, but to be honest, ifit had sold five copies, Sandra
and I would have been very happywith what we achieved. So we're
(29:18):
just grateful that it's landedreally nicely, exactly,
Sander Dur (29:23):
and it did. And indeed, we wanted this book to
be a reflection of us as well,like it's sometimes we see these
authors that write in a verydifferent style than they are
themselves. And you know, itdoesn't really mix well, but it
to us. It shouldn't make adifference whether you read the
book or you talk to us. Itshould be the same tone, it
(29:45):
should be the same approach, andyou should have the same level
of engagement in that sense,
Dave West (29:51):
I apologize. Yes, my book writing is definitely less,
less me than it should be, andmaybe that's something I need to
take on board. So thank you. Youforever.
Unknown (30:01):
I didn't say
Dave West (30:03):
that. I know I feel that, and I do appreciate that I
was, I was a little cynical whenI started reading the book about
how value, the value of thehumor, but I think the it
definitely created a connectionwith me and that that the the
word empathy, you've used it afew times and and I think that
(30:25):
books that create connectionsare pretty rare and actually
pretty, pretty awesome. So Ireally do appreciate you writing
the book, taking the timenavigating the complexities of
the process, and sharing yourwisdom with the with the with
the community, and thank you fortaking the time today. I could
(30:46):
talk to you both for hours, aswe have in the past, so
unfortunately, we don't havethat much time, but so thank you
for taking the time on thispodcast. Thank you again for
having us welcome so thank you.
Listeners. Today we were talkingto sander and Ryan Brooke about
their book, basically as solvingfor value, a journey of ambition
(31:11):
and stupidity. I think I was thelast bit sometimes, but it's an
awesome book. It has some great,great, great anti patterns,
patterns, great stories. It's ait's a really interesting read.
It's also kind of humorous andand really talks about real
(31:32):
Scrum, professional Scrum,whatever you want to call it,
the the essence of why you weredoing the things to deliver
value for your customers, foryour your stakeholders. So I
recommend reading it, enjoy itand and thank you for listening
today to scrum.org, communitypodcast. If you liked what you
(31:52):
heard, please subscribe, sharewith friends, and of course,
come back and listen some more.
I'm lucky enough to have avariety of guests talking about
everything in the area ofprofessional Scrum, product
thinking, and, of course, agile.
Thank you, everybody and Scrumon you.
Music.
(00:00):
Welcome to the scrum.orgcommunity podcast, a podcast
(00:04):
from the home of Scrum. In thispodcast, we feature professional
scrum trainers and other scrumpractitioners sharing their
stories and experiences to helplearn from the experience of
others. We hope you enjoy thisepisode.
Dave West (00:20):
Hello and welcome to the scrum.org community podcast.
I'm your host. Dave West, CEO,here@scrum.org in today's
podcast, we're lucky enough totalk to two authors of a new
book on Scrum and agility. Thebook's title is solving for
value, a journey of ambition andstupidity, by sandida and Ryan
(00:41):
Brooke, welcome to the podcast.
Sandra and Ryan. Thanks forhaving us to be here. It's great
to have you in this sort offestive season, just for the for
the listeners, you don't get thebenefit of this, or maybe, maybe
you've seen a picture of this,but Ryan is wearing his
Christmas sweater or jumper, asI meant to say, so, so that that
obviously provides you with somecontext as he answers these
(01:06):
questions and and actually, I'dlike to start with you, Ryan, if
you don't mind, of course. Socan you tell the listeners about
this, this new book, you know,sort of give, give the overview,
give the the thing you get onthe back as it were,
Ryan Brook (01:21):
yeah, sure. So what we try to do with this book was
try to create something a littlebit different. So what we've got
is, kind of, it's a book of twohalves. We have, we have our
story, our kind of, when weinitially started, it was very
Phoenix Project like it, wewanted a story about a
fictitious organization calledmagnum opus that would allow us,
as commentators looking at thisto be able to well, offer
(01:44):
advice, offer common pitfallsand anti patterns. So you kind
of read it in two ways. Itstarts out with a story, and
then Sanda and I will come in asthe authors and comment on that
story. Say good things, say badthings, but more importantly,
offer practices and improvementsto try and help you. Sanda has a
wonderful word for it. He callsit a bar book. You know, it's a
(02:06):
as if you were sat next to us atthe bar, chatting along with us.
That's kind of what the book isstyled as, that sounds,
Dave West (02:13):
that sounds awesome and anti patterns. Because, from
my experience, I spent a lot oftime, as I said in the sort of
intro to the book, or theforward, going around talking to
organizations doing scrumm andagile, and trying these
different ways of working. Andthere's a lot of examples of
anti patterns that we see overand over again. So so Sanda, I
(02:37):
don't mean to be a cynic here,but there's a lot of agile books
around and, you know, even someof them written by myself. So
gosh, yeah, that they're prettyawful, but there's a lot of
really good ones as well. So whydo we need another agile book?
Sander Dur (02:59):
Well, one of the main things to read this book is
obviously because you wrote theforward to begin with.
Dave West (03:05):
There is that, yes, exactly. Now, the
Sander Dur (03:08):
thing that we saw in the market here is, like Ryan
said, we started differentlythan we ended up with. We
started from scrum masterperspective. But we also know is
that the scrum that the marketat large is shifting more from a
framework oriented mindset tomore of a product oriented
mindset. That's where we diveinto as well. Like Scrum is
(03:29):
still super important. Scrum isreally important, but it's the
means to the end, right? It'snot necessarily the end state,
and that's one of thosedysfunctions that we started to
see in one of the anti patterns,and also to combine that
together with the bar book Scrumis super important, but it's
also so misunderstood in manycases. And that's where we
wanted to dive in thesepractices and what we can do
(03:51):
with them, the anti patterns,and what we have done in our in
our practice to to resolve thesekind of anti patterns.
Dave West (04:00):
Yeah, I so I was fortunate for the listeners to
read this book very early on,and it made me chuckle a lot,
which is something I do want tocome to in a second. There's a
lot of lot of jokes throughoutwhich made me smile. It
definitely felt like I was at apub with Ryan and Sander talking
(04:22):
about my organization or thechallenges that I have. But the
the other thing that I reallyliked about this book, and the
thing that I think makes itspecial, which you sort of
mentioned, was the focus onvalue. I know it's in the title,
and it's very easy to title thebook and then completely forget
it when you've when you'vewritten, when you write it. But
the ultimate that this isn'tabout Scrum. I mean, it is, or
(04:45):
isn't about agile. It is, but itisn't. It's about why. It's
about the outcomes that scrumprovides. And when you don't do
one of these things in Scrum,maybe it's a daily maybe it's,
you know, you know, have asprint goal. Maybe. It's
whatever those things are. Thisis the impact in terms of the
outcome, not that you haven'tdone it. This is, this is the
(05:07):
impact to your organization.
This is why you won't findvalue. So so easy. Does that
really summarize sanda? Youknow, do you think that's
summarizes your thoughts as youwere writing this book,
Sander Dur (05:22):
absolutely that, and it's that, combined with the
fact that a lot of practitionersstruggle to be in these kind of
situations, it takes a lot ofperseverance, and that's why we
wanted to provide the empathy tothe practitioners, right? And
also to get back to what scrumtries to do is to bring the
(05:43):
transparency, inspection,adaptation, having a good, hard,
critical look and the courage tobe transparent about those kind
of things. And we felt that thatis missing in a lot of
organizations, so we want tobring that back, but also let
the reader know that you're notalone in these kind of these
kind of challenges. Yeah, I
Ryan Brook (06:00):
think that that thing that Sanders just hit on
there, that empathy, thatfeeling alone, we often see
Scrum Masters in organizations,almost, well, sadly, sometimes
quite piecemeal. You know,you're in a large area with only
maybe one or two people, and theability to kind of have that
conversation with with a book,in this case, to say you're not
alone. We've been there.
Sometimes it's just reallycrappy. But however experienced
(06:22):
you are, whatever organizationyou're working within, it's just
about taking one foot in frontof another and seeing if you can
get better tomorrow, exactly.
Sander Dur (06:33):
And ultimately, we want to read there to become
better, in getting that valueand delivering that value that
we all strive for. Yeah,
Dave West (06:41):
it kind of reminded me why I'm in this role,
actually, which is, which isbizarre that it would but, you
know, I was as I was reading thebook, and, you know, laughing at
some of the jokes, it remindedme there's a heavy emphasis on
self management, a heavyemphasis on taking ownership in
(07:02):
the context of business value,etc. And you know, part of the
reason why I love Scrum is thatit's about empowering teams to
deliver value. And the role of ascrum master, Agile coach,
Delivery Manager, whatever thattitle is, doesn't really matter.
That's your job. It's to get thebest out of everybody in pursuit
(07:22):
of the goal that you're at. Andthat means contribution. That
means self management, selforganization, empowerment, those
things and that that's heavilytalked about in the in the book,
which I was I It wasn't what Iwas expecting and it but it
really did remind me why, whyscrum so, so important. I
Ryan Brook (07:43):
think one of the things Sandra and I have tried
to do throughout the book is wekeep coming back to that word of
anti patterns that we'veactually gone out on the circuit
a little bit and tried todeliver a talk about the 10
common dysfunctions, 10 lies.
We're calling them, that almostorganizations are telling
themselves. And you kind of seepeople in the comments, and
afterwards, they'll message uson LinkedIn, and they'll,
they'll chuckled, but also havegone, do you know what?
Sometimes, unless you, unlessyou slap yourself in the face
(08:05):
with it, you almost don'tacknowledge these issues, these
anti patterns. So this book isalmost like your guide. Yes,
it's about value, yes, it'sabout self management, but it's,
it's a self reflection tool,really, to say, Do you know
what? That's not okay. How do wetake a step forward?
Dave West (08:23):
So give me an example of one of the anti patterns. Oh,
Ryan Brook (08:26):
Santa, take a pick.
You can. You can pick firstSure.
Sander Dur (08:29):
Let's start with one of the main ones where it
actually starts to go wrong inmany organizations, is that
Scrum, or any you can replacethis with any kind of framework
or methodology, whatever youwant, but it's picked
mindlessly, right? It's, we'regoing to do Scrum because we so
see so many linked influencersdo this kind of thing. There's
so much going on. It soundedcool at this party. No one talks
(08:52):
about Scrum at parties, but, youknow, it sounded cool where I
heard it. And they mindlesslystart running this. And they
don't think about, what kind ofproblem do we really have, what
kind of solutions do we have tothat might fit that problem,
that we can actually, you know,move to mitigate that. And why
might scrum be one of thosethings? And if we're going to do
(09:12):
Scrum, what kind oforganizational changes do we
need to make in order to makethat work? And these steps are
usually skipped immediately.
Scrum is treated like HarryPotter's magic wand, the magic
salvation of everything,expecting that all the the
problems and dysfunctions aremagically going to be resolved.
And that's just not the case.
(09:32):
Yet this that's how it's beingtreated. That's where we want to
shine a little light on thesekind of dysfunctions. It
Dave West (09:39):
that definitely is an empty pattern I see all the
time, and by the way, I don'ttotally hate it, because
obviously they then go on scrumtraining, and that's great, and
that helps pay my mortgage, so Iappreciate it. However, the
reality is that if you adoptsomething without understanding.
(10:00):
The why, which is very differentfrom traditional engineering
processes the IndustrialRevolution, which was just do
this worry. Don't worry aboutthe system. Don't worry about
the why. Just do that widget,really, really, really well and
that. But scrum isn't that.
Scrum is you have to understandthe context. You have to
appreciate the why, you have tounderstand the impact, the
(10:23):
organizational capability tosupport it, and and if those
things aren't necessarily rightor aligned, or the motivation
isn't correct, you know, if itisn't, Scrum isn't about
delivering things faster. You dodeliver things faster, but it's
about delivering value better.
Blah, blah, blah, then youultimately are in trouble. So
that's a really, really greatdysfunction. Ryan hit me up with
(10:45):
another one. Man, oh,
Ryan Brook (10:48):
what do we want to go for? Well, the absolute need
to scale in a lot oforganizations, and I'm purposely
being vague with the word scale.
I know it's like a red rag to alot of bull balls in the Agile
community, but what we see in alot of organizations is, you
know, well, scaling, or descaling, we talk about in the
book, but scaling particularlyas a problem, because it's their
(11:09):
inability to rationalize aproduct backlog and inability to
pick and so what they try and dois try and put loads of teams on
loads of products. And actually,they haven't even got the base
building blocks right. First,it's, do you know what? It's not
even just taking a problem. It'staking a problem and timing it
by 10. And that's something wesee consistently in
(11:32):
organizations, because theybelieve that it's like buying
one simple solution off theshelf, one thing to manage a
scaled implementation versus 10smaller ones. Whereas we all
know that those 10 smaller onesare probably easier to manage
than one large one, and that'ssomething we see all the time.
Dave West (11:52):
Yeah, and do you think that organizations scale?
Because you know that, becausethat historically, that's the
way in which success hascreated, you know, with that
sort of factory mentality thatyou know soon as let's, let's,
let's, let's, add 100 people tothis, when in doubt, add
(12:12):
somebody else. Do you think it'sbecause of that, or do you think
it's because scale means power,authority, status? Well,
Sander Dur (12:21):
and they already have so many people in the
organization that they need tokeep busy, right? So we're just
going to slap a slightframework, a scaling framework,
on it, without even startingwith the basis, with a proper
foundation. Now here's a here'sa nice scaling framework that we
just took off Brian shelf, andnow we're going to apply that
across a multi 100 people. Andgood luck. Now, we expect you to
do the right thing right rightaway, as soon as possible. Yeah?
Dave West (12:44):
And I Yeah. I mean, the Twitter example is an
example of an organ, yeah, whenElon Musk came to Twitter, and I
know that's, you know, there'slots of negative stuff about
Elon at the moment, but, but onething that's really interesting
in terms of the impact that hehad at Twitter in material of
the fact that you know yourexperience of Twitter, but
(13:06):
ultimately they're deliveringmore features now with
significantly less people,they're doing more because, you
know, he instantly reduced theirheadcount significantly. And
rumor has it, he's going to tryto do that with the US
government next, but we'll seehow that goes. But so don't
scale too soon. Get the basicsin place. Scale value, not, not,
(13:30):
not processes, you know, thosesort of, yeah, that makes, makes
a lot, lot of sense. How aboutanother one? This is awesome.
I'm I, even though I read manyof these things, it's sort of
bringing it all back. Now.
Sanda, have you got one that youwould like?
Sander Dur (13:48):
This one is right up Ryan's alley as well. Road maps
are just fixed to follow like ifwhat are you going to what are
you going to eat for dinner?
June, 26 2025 I was
Dave West (14:01):
thinking I was going to have a maybe an Indian, yeah,
I think, you know, ashwari Naan.
Oh, are you not meant to planthat far in advance? Sandra, is
that what you're saying? How
Sander Dur (14:15):
high is the probability that that line is
going to change? It's somethingexactly with something
arbitrary, exactly, we alwayscall roadmaps, the plan to
deviate from and settingsomething in stone just does not
make sense at all, especially ifyou go beyond the even the
(14:36):
closed realm. Brian, what do youthink? Yeah, roadmaps
Ryan Brook (14:39):
are like. It's something that really frustrates
me, because typically we seeroad maps on a confluence page
or on a PowerPoint slide. Theygo from left to right. They've
got milestones on them, andeveryone views them as this
gospel, but we all know theminute that that document gets
emailed out, it's out of date,and it's just incredibly
frustrating that it's thentreated as some. You know, it's
(15:00):
put in p6 or it's put in somesort of planning tool, and then
it's almost ticked off againststyle. You know, hey, why don't
we just try and do a road map inconcentric circles? Now, is in
the middle. Next is a little bitout there with four or five
things in something. One ofthese things might be able to
come into the now, but we justdon't know. I can't plan two
weeks ahead. My teams can't plantwo weeks ahead. So why the hell
(15:23):
are they trying to plan a yearfive years ahead, with putting
dates on it at the same time?
It's just frustrating.
Dave West (15:29):
But surely you have to balance the desire by, you
know, executives like that, youknow, like, like me, I'm
pretending to be one at themoment the because we want to be
able to forecast, becausethere's a lot of other moving
parts inside, you know, whetherit's commitments to partners,
(15:50):
whether it's commitments to thestreet, whether it's how do we,
how do we balance that? And Iknow you talked a little bit
about that in the book, so howdo you, how did you How would
you recommend we balance theneed for flexibility with the
need for for for be able topredict the future a little bit?
Ryan Brook (16:11):
I think you kind of addressed it in your answer.
There you we talk about roadmapsbeing fixed as the anti pattern.
Some of it's a culture and aknowledge issue when we publish
this and we don't say this iswhat we will do. Yes, we need to
forecast. We need to give peoplea vision, a level of
transparency over what thefuture looks like. But also,
there needs to almost be thatcaveat. I wish roadmaps just
(16:33):
came with a little TLDR at thebottom that says this is
probably already wrong, but it,but it's, it's like a product
owner being transparent withtheir decisions in a product
backlog. It's a way of showingpositive intent and purpose. So
I think that is great. Road mapsare a wonderful tool, but they
have a massive drawback whenthey're considered as
commitments rather thanforecasts.
Dave West (16:55):
And obviously there's something about there's some
things we can predict andthere's some things that we
can't. And it's knowing, like wecan predict that we're going to
release the product on thatdate. We just can't predict
exactly what's going to be init. Or maybe you know, and it's
balancing that kind of givingthat level of knowledge. It's
(17:15):
funny whether you know, whetherreports are increasingly wrong
at the moment in the US anyway.
But wouldn't it be nicesometimes they're right, and
that's because they have a highamount, like not much is
changing the jet streams in thesame position, etc. I would love
that that that fidelity to bereported in the Reva report.
(17:36):
This is a high likelihood ofsuccess. This is a low
likelihood of success, as I'mplanning my barbecue or my, you
know, or my kids birthday partyoutside. And I think that road
maps would benefit from some ofthat, you know, the stuff that
we and as soon as we don't knowsomething, then we highlight the
(17:56):
fact and and the like I don'tknow, Sanda, you, you got some
strong opinions on road maps?
Sander Dur (18:04):
Yeah, I'm, I'm also curious, from your perspective
as one of those executives, howdid you deal? How did your road
map change just prior to COVID?
Dave West (18:14):
Oh, fundamentally.
So, it's so funny. So I we usedto draw it. And I know Ryan,
you. I know I know we should besmarter. I apologize to the
audience here, however, youknow, Cobblers, children and all
that. Anyway, so, so we had onmy whiteboard in my office. I
had a plan for the next year,broadly and yes, it was more
(18:36):
goal oriented. It was less out,you know, it was very outcome,
very same. So it was good, youknow, we had some some plans,
and of which, supporting, youknow, sort of like instructor
led online training was not onthat plan. I tried to implement
some ideas around that earlier.
(18:57):
Got massive pushback, given up.
Would be a good way ofdescribing my behaviors. And so
we wasn't there. So March 13, itwas a Friday, I was sitting in
the office with this huge plan,and that was the last day I was
in the office. Andfundamentally, we radically
changed how what we were doing,in terms of the goals that we
were trying to achieve, and howfrequently we reviewed our plan
(19:21):
and our progress against it. Soit fundamentally changed, and we
were doing well. Every otherweek we were replanning the
order of the classes were goingto be available, the you know,
what, how we were supporting,the how face to faces were going
to happen, you know, weren'tvirtual, you know, and, and it
(19:42):
was very dynamic, incrediblystressful, but wasn't the actual
work wasn't actually stressful.
It's funny, it was more theenvironment, because there were
just so many unknowns outside ofwork as well. You know, the
safety. My family and all ofthose sort of things that was
(20:02):
actually more stressful than theactual work. The work was
actually kind of fun, and wedelivered classes very quickly,
and then after three months of,you know, not being able to
deliver it particularlysuccessfully, or having
challenges and learning, we thenit just was, went Gangbuster. So
I guess, yeah,
Sander Dur (20:21):
that's the thing, right? That's one of those
coming back to road maps, butapplies to pretty much all of
the dysfunctions and antipatterns we hear so often. Now,
we can do that here. When Iasked my manager the week
before, just prior to the firstlockdown, like, can I work from
home? Nah, we don't have theinfrastructure. We can't do
that. We don't have thoseoptions. You know, it's going to
(20:44):
take at least half year ofinvestment, so we're not going
to do that. But all of a sudden,these circumstances change. Now
you have the burning platform tochange, and all of a sudden, fam
people can do it within a week.
Everyone's working from home ina week. So it's creating that,
that necessity for people tofind the creativity to solve
these kind of problems. And Ithink that's that's one of the
things that many organizationsshould come back to provide the
(21:06):
sandbox for people to to operatewithin, right? I think that's
one of the things that we'velost over time, is playing
around in that sandbox. I'm notsaying like a physical sandbox,
but there was a parallel to thephysical sandbox when we were a
kid, because those sandboxesworld were the realm of
opportunities. The imaginationwas limitless. And then after we
(21:29):
started moving more and moreinto the corporate world, how,
the why and the creativity got,you know, dragged out. And I
think we need to put that moreback into into practice. I
Dave West (21:44):
100% well that, as I say, that's the reason why I'm
so excited about Scrum. Over thelast 10 years, as I've been CEO
of scrum.org that was reason whyI joined scrum.org because I
ultimately believe in empoweringpeople to have ownership of
their sandbox and encouragingthem to do creative work instead
of just work and, and I think wecan change the world if we do
(22:08):
that and and at the very least,get happier people, which would
be nice, right? That would be agreat step in the right
direction. So I'm curious, youknow, as we've been talking
about the anti patterns we'vebeen talking about this, this
pro I'm curious about your theprocess, you know, your writing
process and journey on thisbook. I hate to say this, but I
(22:30):
don't strike Sander inparticular. Doesn't strike me as
a book writer. You know, youstrike me very much as a let's
get stuff done. Let's get abunch of people together. Let's
cause some chaos in a nice,positive, structured way, and
then make some changes. Andmagic happens. Ryan, you're a
little bit more student, youknow, organized and systematic
(22:53):
and the like they were about.
Ryan Brook (22:55):
You're about to eat your hat. Dave, when you fit,
when you finish your question,
Dave West (22:58):
oh, I was gonna say the process. How did this
journey happen? And, yeah, Ialways love a good hat eating.
I'm
Sander Dur (23:04):
gonna let my evil twin sister answer this question
Ryan Brook (23:08):
that's not helpful on a on an audio only podcast,
the fact that we look verysimilar.
Dave West (23:14):
You do look a little bit similar, I guess so. To
answer your
Ryan Brook (23:17):
question, how did we go about it? We kind of decided
that we wanted to try and breakdown some of the stereotypes of
books. Particularly, they justfeel quite dry, you know, you
you buy one same contentproduced in a different way. And
we just thought, what could wedo? So we knocked up a few
ideas, good old sticky notes andsome online collaboration. And
(23:37):
we tried to come up with atitle, but we couldn't. So we
just started writing. We startedputting out an increment.
Sander, very luckily, has a veryhelpful discord community where
we were releasing chaptersincrementally getting feedback.
What did we think? And once wefelt like we kind of had that, I
guess we call it a track, thetrack of value that we were
aiming for, we then kind of wentheads down. It took us a long
(24:01):
time to get going. I You, Imean, so I'm very grateful you
called me studious. Butactually, Sanda was the one
driving this whole thing. He wasthe one whipping me to get
going. And it was challenging.
Writing a book is, I mean, youknow, Dave, but 50% of it is
actually writing the words, andthen it's the marketing, the IP
ends, the barcodes, the editing,the proofreading, the the front
(24:22):
cover, the name, oh my god,coming up with a name, I said to
Sander in the dedication, we arenever doing this again, and yet,
we already are, aren't we?
Sander, yeah,
Sander Dur (24:34):
the next book is already in the works. Luckily,
we just spoke to Dan Pink, andwe have, we're authorized to use
his work as well to to get sometraction in there. So that's
awesome. Oh,
Dave West (24:45):
autonomy, mastery, purpose is always, always fun,
right? The So, yeah, the theprocess of writing a book is, is
always very interesting. Andit's, it's great that you
highlighted a couple of thingsthat I think that that
traditional publishing. Housesto have a real challenge with
which is this incremental, youknow, sort of like
experimentation approach. Andobviously, Sanda has a great
(25:08):
discord community that you canleverage and get that feedback
as you inspect and adapt thejourney that that you're that
you're on. That was, that wasinteresting, Sanda, what was
your experience of writing this
Sander Dur (25:23):
book? Well, one of the first things, so I started
writing this book, I asked Ryanto be my co author, because I'm
terrible at really wrappingthings up. And he's like, South
bar calls at the account tobuild a buddy, and he was my
account to build a buddy. So,you know, there's always someone
to fall back on. And I startwith with the idea of of calling
the company, Mack mope isapproach. Ryan said, This is
what I want to do. Mac mope isthe best ever work. That that's
(25:47):
what it means in Latin. And thenI found out that he studied
Latin, and then immediately Igot that back into my face. Now
it means greatest work. Youknow, it's that kind of stuff
that I would have never foundout if I didn't work with with
Ryan. But also we try to eat ourown dog food. We try to do this
in a scrum way, you know, dothis iteratively, incrementally,
in sprints. Turns out, sprintsare not the Scrum is not the
(26:12):
right way to write a book, whichis interesting because it's not.
It doesn't have that level ofcomplexity that you would need
to make scrum actually work,right? It's we, we needlessly
over complicated that in thatsense. But we learned so much
because we self published for avariety of reasons. So then,
indeed, it's writing the words.
But then you also dive into, howdoes the publication work? What
(26:35):
do you need to pay attention to?
How do you style the book,making sure that there's
sufficient spacing in between,switching the page numbers from
left and right. It's all thesesmall details that you would
never notice if you're justchugging out the words,
Dave West (26:51):
yeah, it is, yeah.
It's interesting. You said thatScrum is not necessarily right
for writing books. I thinkthere's definitely some elements
of Scrum, particularly whenyou're trying to discover the
journey, the sort of crux of thebook, that experimentation and
rapid delivery and feedback. Ithink it works perfectly. I
think towards the, you know, asas a book becomes a formed
thing, then it becomes more ofit's a complicated, maybe even a
(27:16):
simple, problem that. And thenit is really sort of like just
getting tasks done, learningwhat they, you know, learning
what that tasks are like buyingan ISBN, because you have to buy
them, which I never reallyunderstood until, you know,
being involved a little bit inbook publishing. So the last
thing I just want to touch onbefore, we leave, and this has
(27:39):
been a really thank you fortaking the time. Today is the
humor, the scrum dad jokes. Iknow both of you are funny but
but being funny in real life andbeing funny on the page aren't
necessarily the same thing. Itwas a bit of a risk. Wasn't it
(28:01):
being humorous in a book becauseof the way in which, you know,
it's like being humorous on onTwitter or on Slack, it can flat
very quickly, right? Why did youdecide to I mean, I it has
worked. So for our listeners,you know, get if you get the
opportunity to read this book,and I recommend you do it
(28:21):
actually does work. Some of themyou're just like, you're
groaning, but some of themactually make you giggle a
little bit. So
Unknown (28:31):
yeah, it has worked, but it's a bit of a risk. Why
did you decide to do it?
Ryan Brook (28:37):
Because no one wants to write a book. That is really,
really hard to do. We wanted towrite a book for us to read.
This was never about revenue.
This was never about marketingor branding. The cynics can
disagree, but this was somethingthat we went you know what? I
would want to read this book,and when I read things, I want
to be chuckling along. You can'tdo boring, bland empathy. You
(28:58):
need to be like, Do you knowwhat we've been there. And also,
humor is our way of coping withthings and kind of accepting
that things aren't perfect. Andso, yeah, you know, it was a bit
of a risk, but to be honest, ifit had sold five copies, Sandra
and I would have been very happywith what we achieved. So we're
(29:18):
just grateful that it's landedreally nicely, exactly,
Sander Dur (29:23):
and it did. And indeed, we wanted this book to
be a reflection of us as well,like it's sometimes we see these
authors that write in a verydifferent style than they are
themselves. And you know, itdoesn't really mix well, but it
to us. It shouldn't make adifference whether you read the
book or you talk to us. Itshould be the same tone, it
(29:45):
should be the same approach, andyou should have the same level
of engagement in that sense,
Dave West (29:51):
I apologize. Yes, my book writing is definitely less,
less me than it should be, andmaybe that's something I need to
take on board. So thank you. Youforever.
Unknown (30:01):
I didn't say
Dave West (30:03):
that. I know I feel that, and I do appreciate that I
was, I was a little cynical whenI started reading the book about
how value, the value of thehumor, but I think the it
definitely created a connectionwith me and that that the the
word empathy, you've used it afew times and and I think that
(30:25):
books that create connectionsare pretty rare and actually
pretty, pretty awesome. So Ireally do appreciate you writing
the book, taking the timenavigating the complexities of
the process, and sharing yourwisdom with the with the with
the community, and thank you fortaking the time today. I could
(30:46):
talk to you both for hours, aswe have in the past, so
unfortunately, we don't havethat much time, but so thank you
for taking the time on thispodcast. Thank you again for
having us welcome so thank you.
Listeners. Today we were talkingto sander and Ryan Brooke about
their book, basically as solvingfor value, a journey of ambition
(31:11):
and stupidity. I think I was thelast bit sometimes, but it's an
awesome book. It has some great,great, great anti patterns,
patterns, great stories. It's ait's a really interesting read.
It's also kind of humorous andand really talks about real
(31:32):
Scrum, professional Scrum,whatever you want to call it,
the the essence of why you weredoing the things to deliver
value for your customers, foryour your stakeholders. So I
recommend reading it, enjoy itand and thank you for listening
today to scrum.org, communitypodcast. If you liked what you
(31:52):
heard, please subscribe, sharewith friends, and of course,
come back and listen some more.
I'm lucky enough to have avariety of guests talking about
everything in the area ofprofessional Scrum, product
thinking, and, of course, agile.
Thank you, everybody and Scrumon you.
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