It was that time in the Data School for our cohort...
... when we finally had our first project. Luckily it was an internal project meaning we had previous students and now Data School Consultants providing us with a project.
That did not mean it was easier. So for the first week, I was going to be the Project Manager. I was actually hyped to do that, because since I was a dedicated Scrum Master before, I knew I wanted to incorporate Agile methodologies to navigate the uncertainty of the week.
The problem with data projects often is they suffer from 'Scope'. We tend to overpromise things that is not achievable in the timeframe we have. I wanted to use to maintain an overview for everbody by timeboxing the three days.
With a complex data, it was easy for the team to go down a rabbit hole. I thought ensuring 'profitability' of our time, we needed a taskboard which was already provided to me by our coach. I introduced a modified version of Daily Standups and a tiny Sprint Backlog.
Normally Sprints are measured in weeks. Here our Sprint was 3 x 8 hours. Every morning we identified the task everybody handled and struggled with but the daily took longer than just the 15 minutes is suppose to be.
We spent hours arguing which KPIs were the most important. As a PM, I saw our profitability - in terms of time - dropping minute by minute. We were discussing instead of doing. I was trying to find my way of balancing commanding and facilitating. I had to intervene and remind the team our 'Definition of Done'. We had to stop to solve everything perfectly but rather have a functional solution.
My key takeaway 'Scrum' is not just about ceremonies; time-boxing is key. Scrum should rather be introduced in long term project (longer than a week). A good decision today is worth more than a perfect decision tomorrow. We as a team learned also in this scenario, how to work under stress and time pressure.