I had some surfing lessons a couple of weeks ago in Santa Cruz , Ca. and it got me thinking about success and technique. At first the challenge with surfing is getting to your feet on the board and while I was learning the techniques and tumbling into the waves it seemed impossible. The instructor taught me some basic tips (hands at chest level braced against the board, arch your back, do ‘the plank’, quickly move your feet up to the correct position on the board, and you’re up!) and soon I was riding the long waves into shore. When I had the basics and knew I could do it, once I’d caught my first wave, then I could think about technique and the improvements I could make to catch more waves and ride them longer and looking more like a ‘real’ surfer. When I had caught my first wave in to shore and felt how much fun that ride was then I was committed to paddling back out and doing it all again…and again…and again.

It struck me that surfing is one of those things where success begets success. Once you’ve stood up on the board you know you can do it again and then you want to do it again …and so you do. You’ve removed the psychological barrier of ‘can’t’ and you know that you can because you have done it and that spurs you to do it again and do it better.

I am now a few thousand miles from Santa Cruz but am finding that my surfing experiences are still in my thoughts and applying to my daily activities around Scrum. Last month the Magic Milestones team successfully launched the new look UKChina site for the BBC World Service which was our ninth new site for the 1024 project that we kicked off last November. It was a succesful project and an exciting individual launch and one of the best things about the 1024 project was that we did not encounter any organisational or individual ‘can’t’ about using Scrum.

Part of the reason for this 100% team engagement with Scrum was because as Scrummasters we had eliminated the ‘can’t’ from our minds and like the surfing lessons we were focussed on improving techniques for success and not on whether or not we could or couldn’t use Scrum to deliver. Magic Milestones had provided 3 Scrummasters for the 1024 project and we had all used Scrum at least once before, learned the basic techniques, experienced success and brought that attitude into the project. We had caught the wave, ridden it to shore and liked it enough to paddle back out to do it again. Our team members were a combination of permanent staff and contractors and were cross functional (designer, developer, product owners) and had varying levels of experience with Agile methods and the way we approached the project was new to all the teams. It is conceivable that some of them had reservations and resistance to using Scrum but I can’t say that I heard about this in my teams or noticed it in others and I think this may be because the Scrummasters were convinced about the ‘can’. Without being overt evangelists we led the teams to success in Wave 1 and we all liked it so much we did it again in Wave 2!

We didn’t encounter much fear of change or resistance to new techniques on this project By quickly experiencing success (the first site was launched within 60 days of kick off) we had buy-in and a team of winners. It must be said that the support from top management was crucial to this success and to the adoption of Scrum.

An article on the Scrum Alliance website refers to the ‘Emotional Impediments’ to successfully adopting Scrum in organisations. These are redefined in the comments as psychological impediments rather than emotional as the root cause of the impediment are not always accessible. The author (Michael De La Maza) suggests that support groups would help combat fear of change and resistance to new methods.

After the BBC experience, I feel that experiencing success is more of an antidote to fear of change than the support group suggested in that article. Committed leadership from Scrummasters can convince team members that it can be done and quick wins reinforce that conviction. This sets the foundation for longer term success. People are often afraid of their first time experience and the potential wipe out but once they’ve been shown how to do it and experienced their first wave I’m pretty sure they’ll all paddle back out to do it again.