How Being a Magician Made Me a Better Scrum Master.

You find transferable skills in the strangest places. The principles I mastered learning and performing Magic gave me multiple insights onto the inner secrets of Agility.

While introducing new practices and techniques to Scrum Teams, It reminded me of an experience from my own past. The journey of the Scrum Team mirrored the one that I had taken while learning magic. By understanding the parallels, I was able to gain insights that I feel made me a better Scrum Master.

When you first learn a magic effect, you follow the same process.

• Understand the mechanics involved.
• Spend an extended period practicing each individual mechanical step.
• Practice the flow and hand-offs between each of the mechanical steps.
• Practice until the mechanical processes become second nature. You are able to perform them without looking at your hands, or expending to much mental effort.
• Now you can start to work on the most important aspect of the trick the presentation.

This is where you introduce audience interaction. You need to be able to engage and direct the audience in the way required to perform the effect. Or in the way required to cover up what you are really doing. This means giving your full attention to the audience. The magic only happens when you get the mechanics and presentation aspects correct.

When coaching Scrum Teams, I conduct an exercise where I split the team into three groups.

• Group 1 are the scribes their job is to document everything they see.
• Group 2 is the apprentice magician their job is to perform the trick.
• Group 3 are the audience they sit back and feel relieved that they are not in groups 1 or 2. I then proceed to perform the trick.

I then ask the apprentice magician to consult with the scribes and perform the trick.

This can result in two possible outcomes. They can attempt to perform the trick and fail. Or more usually they cannot or will not. Because even if they follow the steps as written it will not work because I was doing something they could not see. And what they did not see is the secret that makes the trick work. Great they have now discovered a fundamental truth.

No matter how simple something looks from the outside. It is what you cannot see that makes it work.

A lack of awareness of this fundamental truth leads many teams towards adopting cargo cult Scrum. The Spotify model is another good example. Watching the YouTube videos leads you to believe that it is a simple model that is easy to duplicate. But there are many other things that happened unseen. For example extensive changes to the underlying culture were needed. You may also be surprised to know that Spotify no longer use the Spotify model.

Therefore, whenever one of my teams adopt a new practice they know how to apply the correct mindset.

Do not only learn the outward mechanics of a practice. Find out what needs to happen in the background that enables those mechanics.

While learning each magic trick I was unknowingly following the SHU — HA — RI model. The process that I describe in the second paragraph equates to the SHU phase of this model. Once I had mastered the trick only then could I experiment. I could change the presentation narrative. Or substitute some of the mechanics with alternatives I had already mastered. This equates to HA. Working at RI would mean inventing new tricks.

When learning a new practice, a team will be entirely within the SHU phase. The main characteristic of being in SHU is concentrating inwardly on the how. The how needs to include the unseen aspects that make the practice effective. Once you have mastered these, only then can you switch your focus outward to realize the full benefits that the practice will bring. The real value of magic is in the wonder that it delivers to an audience. Not in the mechanics of the effect. Similarly Scrum teams should be focused on the value they deliver. Not on the mechanics of the Scrum practices.

A practice is only effective when you are focusing 100% on the value delivered and not expending any thought or effort on the how.

The time and effort that it will take to achieve mastery should not be underestimated. Every team will progress at their own pace. Mastery is not something that can be driven by a predefined timetable. There are no short cuts to gaining true mastery. Mastery only comes from experience, which only comes over time. True mastery also means that you are constantly examining how you do things to see if you can improve them. This is another of the fundamental truths that the team needs to embrace.

You must put in the time and effort to master any skill, there are no short cuts.

You may be surprised to learn that magic consists of only 6 effects. Each of these effects can be performed in thousands of ways. You can then combine the 6 effects in thousands of ways to create a virtually infinite number of magic effects. Working with Scrum is similar in that you have a limited number of practices. But each of these practices can be performed in many ways.

Although we all follow Scrum, this does not mean that we must all work in the same way.

The specific way you choose to achieve the goal of the practice will depend on the environment you are working in. Every organisation is unique so the unseen aspects that underpin the practice will also be unique. Therefore, the combination that is right for your organisation needs to be discovered. Why would the solution devised for Spotify to sell music be suitable for a bank?

The last thing that being a Magician taught me is how to manage an audience. Getting and keeping an audience’s attention is the key to good magic. Constructing an engaging and believable narrative structure for the trick makes it or breaks it. This is also true for any presentation or training session you create. The ability to put yourself in the shoes of the audience creates better magic.

Spend some time to explore how you team will perceive your training and presentations. Aim to make more enjoyable. Training and presentations when done at their best are a mix of education and entertainment.

Gaining an understanding of the psychology side of magic gives a great insight into human behaviors. It allows you to use the expected response to build ‘interactive sessions’. These seem open but are in fact following the route you want. This can be useful when you have a few options and you want the team to think they have a free choice. In case you did not know already magicians are very sneaky. Applying audience management skills to my work as a Scrum Master has proved invaluable.

Add some magic to your skill set you will be surprised how much better at Scrum you and your team get as a result.

How easy something looks from the outside is directly proportionate to the amount of time you spend gaining the skill. There is no quick route to gaining True Agility. But there are many quick and easy routes to adopting bad ineffective agile practices.

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