Articles and Books,  Product Management

My Huffington Post Article: From Dungeon Master to SCRUM Master

My latest post on Huffington Post is “From Dungeon Master to Scrum Master: 15 Software Development Lessons from Dungeons and Dragons” and is a bit of a revamp of my D&D article from here, but geared towards SCRUM mastering and managing Software Development teams. You may find it fun and kitschy or you may find it dumb. I’m kinda’ ok with both (I’m learning that I can’t make all the people happy all the time).

A sampling of that article:

I started playing Dungeons and Dragons in about the 5th or 6th grade. I didn’t get good at it for a while, but once I did, I didn’t play much longer (insert reference to “The Best Days of My Life” here.) Dungeons and Dragons taught me a few lessons that I didn’t realize would turn out to be great life lessons, until I was much older. This childhood game taught me life lessons that I would eventually apply to the business world – more specifically, the world of software development – and I know I’m not alone. In fact, there is a distinct possibility that many a developer got their start scoping out character sheets, and many a Scrum Master began as a Dungeon Master.

Here are a few of the lessons I took away from those carefree days. And yes, this image is from a box set sitting on my table at home. Don’t judge.

1. Build a great campaign, and if the game is good, expect your players to break it. 

In software, we design workflows. Then, users take routes we never thought possible. You build a product, sell the product and potentially service the product long-term. Maybe it sells, maybe it doesn’t – but if you’re not ready for the sales to happen, you won’t sell that much. How much work do you put into building a campaign, or game, in Dungeons and Dragons, if the characters are just going to go right off your script? How much effort do you put into building a business if the customers are just going to buy something from you that is completely different than what you thought you were going to sell? These are the same questions, and there’s no right answer to either (although there are many wrong answers). Understand that when momentum strikes, if you don’t have a good campaign built that is flexible, you won’t maintain that momentum. And if you haven’t thought of all the various routes a user can take around your software, you’re going to have a bunch of lost paladins mucking around in swamps with no monsters!

To read more, click here.

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