Jan G Beaver, PhD CST. Scrum By Heart: The Chiara String Quartet Scrum Experience

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2 Jan G Beaver, PhD CST Scrum By Heart: The Chiara String Quartet Scrum Experience

3 Meet the Chiaras Gregory Beaver Cello Jonah Sirota Viola Hyeyung Yoon Violin Rebecca Fischer Violin

4 The Problem About two years ago [end of 2014], my string quartet realized we were in a dire situation. - Rebecca Fischer

5 The Problem In December of 2014, the Chiara Quartet was in trouble. we reached a breaking point all agreed that we needed to make some drastic changes. - Gregory Beaver

6 Another Problem Music by Heart Adding to the interest was the fact that Chiara delivered the lengthy program from memory or, as they put it, by heart. The payoff of such an endeavor is usually substantial in that players are freed from the printed score and allowed to dig deeper into the music s meaning and expression. -The Virginia Gazette, February 7, 2018

7 Two Major Issues Team dynamics/dysfunction Work management

8 Scrum? Really? Shameless book plug The Chiara Quartet was storming. We were getting less done, and having less fun doing it. -Gregory Beaver

9 Psychological Safety Psychological safety is a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up. It describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves. - Professor Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School Prerequisites for psychological safety in the Chiara String Quartet The group must have a clear, shared sense of purpose and goals The group must be able to depend upon everyone to exert equal commitment and effort towards those goals

10 Strong vs Weak Teams Conversational Equality: As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well. But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined. Emotional IQ: Strong teams have high average social sensitivity a fancy way of saying they were skilled at intuiting how others felt based on their tone of voice, their expressions and other nonverbal cues. Ineffective teams, in contrast.as a group, have less sensitivity toward their colleagues. - Charles Duhigg, What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team New York Times Magazine, Feb

11 The Solution In short, Scrum saved the Chiara Quartet. We have had 3 very happy years since then, and our career has taken a giant leap forward as a direct result. - Gregory Beaver

12 Chiara Scrum Fitting Scrum Roles to a string quartet Scrum Master rotates around the quartet every 4th Sprint The Scrum Master monitors rehearsal timing, direction, and the energy of the other players, using open-ended questions to facilitate agreement on changes, breaks, etc. The Scrum Master makes no direct musical suggestions! No hijacking of rehearsals Scrum Master is the most vital and also the most difficult role We re all the Product Owner!

13 Chiara Scrum Breaking down, ordering, and managing work User Stories describe what and why - and also explicitly what the story does not include Tasks are the how Defining Done for each Story is critical to success

14 Stories and Tasks Make a great recording of the Bartok 4th String Quartet S:8 4.1 measures measures

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16 Keys to Successful Rehearsals 1. Clear, honest commitment spelled out for each member 2. Shared understanding of large-scale goals 3. Shared understanding of how much work every goal might take 4. Shared understanding of when rehearsals will happen and how long they will last 5. Shared understanding of what the purpose of every moment in rehearsal is about (are we doing intonation work? running the movement? musical work? etc.)

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18 Chiara Scrum Scrum Events in a string quartet context Sprint is a Cycle of rehearsals directed toward a specific, shared goal (performance, recording session, learning a new piece, etc.) Each Cycle is 2-3 weeks but always the same number of work days - group travel does not count toward work days Work days vary in length, long-short rehearsal pattern, to build in sustainable pace The Events of each Cycle are standard Scrum Events Emphasis on Backlog Refinement and reaching agreement on the work Story sizing is relative using Affinity Grouping technique

19 Chiara Scrum Scrum Events in a string quartet context Sprint Planning: One hour time box Daily Scrum: 15 minutes with follow-on discussion if needed Backlog Refinement: Two hours, once each Sprint Sprint Review: Performance, recording session, informal presentation of accomplishments - whichever is appropriate for the Sprint Sprint Retrospective: One hour, standard Retrospective format

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21 Chiara Scrum Focus on finishing Never optimize for hours, always optimize at the Cycle (Sprint) level using Velocity as the guide Establishing a consistent Velocity was an unexpected - and powerful - outcome Each performance, concert, or recording session is a non-repeatable chunk of work; even a repeat performance of the same program is a completely new Story Exposed the exhausting and depressing fallacy that music is never done

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24 Outcomes Improved everything! Dramatic improvement in group dynamic focused around psychological safety Clear understanding of the scope of each Story and equally clear Acceptance Criteria, combined with a clear Definition of Done Breaking rehearsal work into doable chunks with clear goals end points

25 Outcomes Improved everything! Increased rehearsal outcomes dramatically Initially reduced performance rehearsal time by 25%, Business meetings became enjoyable for the first time ever Ultimately reduced recording rehearsal time by 2 / 3 AND dramatically improved the quality of the resulting recordings

26 Key Lessons Learned No matter how long your team has been together you can drop into Storming Without a conscious structure that supports psychological safety even the best team can drift into dysfunction Communication and empathy are the keys to psych safety Individual employee performance optimization suboptimizes teams by focusing on individuals Great teams are smarter than smart individuals so optimize teams!

27 Key Lessons Learned Creative conflict is healthy and necessary; confrontation destroys psychological safety and generates severe group dysfunction Use a Parking Lot to capture disruptive ideas that would otherwise lead to distraction or confrontation The Scrum Master needs to be emotionally agile. The Scrum Master has to be intensely alert to anything that could even possibly escalate into confrontation and use whatever techniques are necessary to defuse the situation, e.g., take a break, parking lot, is someone just having a bad day and needs group support, etc.

28 Epilogue And now an end In a spirit of tremendous gratitude and love, the Chiara String Quartet has made the decision to end full-time work together in September of 2018, following a rich and diverse 18-year performance career.

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30 References Gregory Beaver, Chamber Music Rehearsal Efficiency Through Scrum Gregory Beaver, Becoming rock stars: how to bring your chamber music group s rehearsals to life Gregory Beaver, Turning your professional chamber music group into rock stars: How to fully implement Scrum and the lessons of the Chiara String Quartet for your group Charles Duhigg, What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team New York Times Magazine, Feb Amy Edmondson, Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams Administrative Science QuarterlyVol. 44, No. 2 (Jun., 1999), pp Rebecca Fischer, How Scrum Saved My String Quartet Strings Magazine, March 17, John Shulson, A strong, emotional farewell for Chiara String Quartet The Virginia Gazette, Feb