20 September 2017
Hi there!
You certainly remember that I am pretty pro-agile ways of working. In this short post I want to point you to what is – for me anyway – at the core of a successful agile approach.
There are a number of events in Scrum; 5 to be accurate; and yet, if you execute these, there is no guarantee for success. Believe me, I know; by experience.
So these are not the key. Performing these events without knowing what is behind them most likely leads to Zombie Scrum. I witness, this is not fun. And then all too fast, people blame the framework. “It doesn’t work for us.”
It is also not the roles nor the artefacts.
What is it then what makes a product development successful?
To me, it is all in the empiricism and the values.
Today product development, projects, are complex. And become more and more complex. This means that without the necessary transparency on both the product and the way of developing this product, there is not enough possibility for inspection and adaptation. And if we cannot adapt fast enough, well, some people will not be happy… our customers.
Now in order to be able to implement such an empirical process control approach, the entire team really needs to live up to a number of values: commitment, courage, focus, openness and respect. I’ll not describe these myself; there is a great blog post series on these.
As a Scrum Master, Agile Coach or Agile Project Manager, it is key that you work on these with your team. Very hard. Day-in-day-out. Show your leadership here. And once your team really masters the values and understands what the events, roles and artefacts really mean, then I am convinced you will have a very successful implementation.
Enjoy your adventure!
Steven
PS. I also keep working on my skills to achieve the above. Lately I came across the Certified Agile Leadership training by a recognized expert in this field, Zuzana Sochova. I decided to register for a session in October. Why not join me? Would be great if we could meet again and have a chat. More info is here.
