“The key is to refine the plan throughout the project rather than to do it all up front.”
- Scrum, page 119
"The Scrum framework harnesses how teams actually work and gives them the tools to self-organise and rapidly improve both speed and quality of work."- Scrum, page 9
To implement Scrum, Jeff outlines the following steps:
1. Pick a Product Owner, Team and Scrum Master
The team does the work. The Scrum Master figures out how to do the work better. The Product Owner decides what the work should be, and the priority.
2. Create a Product Backlog, prioritize and estimate efforts required
Product backlog contains every feature that could be included in the product or service vision.
Not all features can be accomplished. The key is in prioritizing based on impact, importance, ease of implementation and profitability.
3. Sprint Planning
Sprints are typically one or two weeks and less than a month. The goals and work to be done are determined at the beginning of each Sprint, based on the product backlog.
4. Make work visible
Sticky notes representing items to be done are placed and moved on the Scrum Board under three columns: To Do, Doing, Done.
5. Daily Stand-up or Daily Scrum
Each day, at the same time, for no more than fifteen minutes, the team and the Scrum Master meet to report and review what were done and what could be done better, including the need to remove any obstacles.
6. Sprint Review or Sprint Demo
The team shows what they have accomplished during the Sprint.
7. Sprint Retrospective
A review of what was done right and what could be improved.
8. Immediately start the next sprint cycle, taking into account the lessons learned.
"What Scrum does is create a different kind of pattern."- Scrum, page 86
By setting up a positive pattern, the daily and weekly rhythm of scrum creates a virtuous, self-reinforcing cycle that encourages increasingly better performance.
The following are key characteristics inherent in Scrum:
Teams
Time
Waste
Plan
Priorities
Happiness
"Each sprint is an opportunity to do something totally new; each day, a chance to improve. Scrum encourages a holistic worldview."- Scrum, page 81
Scrum accelerates human effort and it is universally applicable.
Education
In the Chemistry class in Ashram College, Netherlands, teacher Wijnands introduced eduScrum to the students. Cross functional teams were formed based on skills ranging from bravery and empathy to maths and goal achievement. Students learned to work with and appreciate people with different talents.
The students used a flip chart with columns listing ‘All items’,’ To do’, ‘In progress’, ‘Done’, to plan the lessons they wanted to complete each day, and track their progress. They also used ‘Definition of Done’ and ‘Definition of Fun’, to help motivate the learning process. The outcome was a totally engaged class without disciplinary problems.
Poverty
In Uganda, The Grameen Foundation provided 1200 ‘Community Knowledge Workers’ (CKWs) with smartphones so that they could access information on crop health and sales prices. Scrum was used to develop the app with the most critical features. One participant reported that the agricultural data doubled both her yield and prices.
Government
The Scrum framework encourages transparency, priority and accountability, and is more responsive to the wishes of the people. The office of the Chief Information Officer of the State of Washington used Scrum to deliver actionable, implementable policies to state departments every week, with moderate success.
One roadblock is that the Waterfall method is actually written into State Law and hard to change.
Challenges
Scrum requires team members to share information, as well as be flexible and transparent, which is not easy to implement.To be effective, Scrum demands a certain degree of emotional maturity and an atmosphere of trust. Team members need to have the fortitude to bring up issues, listen to feedback, and seek solutions as a team rather than being defensive.
Scrum is increasingly being used outside the software development field, and being adopted as a productivity tool.
Jeff is the co-creator of Scrum and a leading expert on how the framework has evolved to meet the needs of today’s business. The methodology he developed in 1993 and formalized in 1995 with Ken Schwaber has since been adopted by the vast majority of software development companies around the world. But Jeff realized that the benefits of Scrum are not limited to software and product development. He has adapted this successful strategy for several other industries including: finance, healthcare, higher education and telecom. As the CEO of Scrum Inc. and the Senior Advisor and Agile Coach to OpenView Venture Partners, Jeff sets the vision for success with Scrum. He continues to share best practices with organizations around the globe and has written extensively on Scrum rules and methods.
