Enter the Dragon
A friend recommended that I try giving the team kudos using a kung-fu theme. A beer and a Bruce Lee flick were all it took to get me started. The names have been changed to protect the innocent…
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So there I was last night watching Bruce Lee’s classic “Enter the Dragon”. This movie has everything: the bad guys were *really* bad (this one had a removable hand that he could replace with a claw). And the good guy, well, he was *really* good. Bruce did everything with such authority. You watch him and he just owns the screen. He freezes after every move, as if to dare his opponent to even breath in the presence of his superiority. Bruce is so good that he doesn’t even need to wear a shirt. He suffixes each lightning fast strike of his iron hand with a high pitched cry that rings out, “EEEAAAAWWWuuuhhh!!!”
It makes the hair on your arms stand on end. Chills run down your spine. I don’t know of many things that came out of the 70’s that can rival this movie for sheer greatness.
Cut to the present, I’m sitting in on a Scrum planning meeting with a team. I’m watching the scrum master work with his team to determine what they are going to do in the next sprint. Right before my eyes I witness the team in action, executing moves worthy of my crime fighting hero, Bruce. A team member takes a story, and the scrum master asks for an estimate – and then he freezes. You can feel the air in the room actually stop circulating…
“EEEEAAAAWWWWuuuhhh!!!”
It was magnificent! Then another team member pulls a story off the backlog – there is a brief flash of post-it notes – so fast that the human eye can barely follow it, and the scrum master is there again asking for an estimate – and once again, just like in the movie, he freezes…
“EEEEAAAAWWWWuuuhhh!!!”
In a matter of minutes, none of the tasks were remaining. The team had collaboratively defeated their collective enemies, bad planning and poor commitment. I checked the hair on my arms – it was standing up.
Did I mention that the scrum master *was* wearing a shirt?
Best regards, Tom