TL; DR: The Stoic Scrum Master – Making Your Scrum Work (30)
Can wisdom from the past still be relevant to today’s VUCA-determined world? I started reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations some time ago and found it intriguing; maybe it applies to “Agile?” In other words: is there something like a Stoic Scrum Master?
If I understand Stoicism correctly, it is about living a life of virtue, which comprises wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation. (All of those can be further subdivided, see Stoic Ethics.) For whatever reason, I felt reminded of Scrum Values and thought: could it be that the first principles of “agile” haven’t been defined by the Agile Manifesto but by “Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BCE?”
So, I embarked on a fun exercise of asking our beloved LLM to create an essay that applies Stoicism to Scrum, notably the Stoic Scrum Master.
A few years ago, I ran a survey to figure out what Scrum Masters serving a single Scrum team do all day. Now that we have a new kid, pardon: a new LLM, on the block, I reran the old questionnaire: Club Scrum: What Are You Doing all Day, ChatGPT — as a Scrum Master?
Based on the survey results from 2018, the normalized total amount of time spent on Scrum events, educating themselves, or coaching teammates and stakeholders, respectively, was approximately 12 hours per week, which leaves a lot of room for dealing with impediments.
Read on and learn what ChatGPT considers to be a typical workload. (Excluding the removal of impediments.)
A few weeks ago, I ran a simulated job interview with ChatGPT for a fictitious Scrum Master position. Admittedly, I would not have invited this “interviewee” for an interview with other team members; however, the interview produced some remarkable answers. Consequently, I tried the same with a Product Owner position, aware of the challenges this would pose, as the Product Owner role is significantly fuzzier than the one of a Scrum Master. So, I took a few questions from the Hiring: 82 Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions guide and ran a ChatGPT Product Owner job interview.
Read on and learn whether a statistical model will challenge product people in the near future.
TL; DR: Agile Transformation with ChatGPT or McBoston?
This article is another excursion into this nascent yet fascinating new technology of generative AI and LLMs and the future of knowledge work. I was interested in learning more about a typical daily challenge many agile practitioners face: How shall we successfully pursue an agile transformation? Shall we outsource the effort to one of the big consultancies — McBoston? Or shall we embark on an agile transformation with ChatGPT providing some guidance?
If technology can pass a Wharton MBA exam, maybe, it deserves some attention. We thought that AI might initially come after simple office jobs. I am no longer sure about that. Maybe, ChatGPT’s successor will start at the top of the food chain.
Last week, I ran an “interview” with ChatGPT as an applicant for a fictitious Scrum Master position based on questions from Scrum Master Interview Guide. (See below.) While the overall results were broadly acceptable, I thought that changing the ChatGPT prompts might deliver better results. So, this time, I chose to present ChatGPT with three everyday scenarios based on more comprehensive prompts. Lo and behold, it worked very well.
Think twice if you still believe this technology is a fad or a toy. Instead, grab a cup of coffee and read for yourself.
TL; DR: A ChatGPT Job Interview for a Scrum Master Position
Can a large language model, not specializing in anything “agile,” pass a screening interview for a Scrum Master position? In this ChatGPT job interview, I put OpenAI’s latest generative AI to the test. I took several questions from the 73 Scrum Master Interview Questions guide, see below, covering the whole spectrum from the broad picture to more specific questions, only answerable with hands-on experience on the interviewee’s side.
So, read on and learn whether Scrum Masters will soon be replaced with a chatbot.
