General

Scrum and Control

Scrum and Control…What?

Scrum is all about NOT being in conventional control and still getting things done, fast and more effectively.

Today, Blogger, Author and a friend, Tanmay Vora wrote an interesting post that conveys a similar point – How NOT to be in control.

Tanmay talks about three important points:

  1. Positional Power.
  2. Staying on top of the information and
  3. Communication.

All the three points are nicely conveyed.  Read Tanmay’s full post here.

An effective implementation of Scrum also touches upon all three points that Tanmay mentioned.

In Scrum, there is no positional power. People who get things done are in control of their own work and the software is developed collaboratively with the loosely defined guidelines that are based on tightly subscribed principles.

Staying on top of the information is the key success driver for a Scrum team. In Daily Scrum Meetings, this becomes evident.

Take any successful Scrum project and you will find a common thing – excellent communication among the team members. No communication, no Scrum. It is covered in the basics. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.

Many a times, people ask me: Why is Scrum your favorite weapon in the world of software development? My answer is simple – It is the most logical, getting it done kinda framework that doesn’t depend on mere rules and controllers of those rules.

Scrum relies on principles more than rules…and I have always chosen principles over rules and have never regretted.

Scrum rocks. People doing right kind of Scrum also.

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Which Scrum Software Will Assure Guaranteed Project Success?

More often than not, I hear this quesiton – Which Scrum Software Will Assure Guaranteed Project Success?

My short answer is: “No Scrum Software can assure guaranteed project success.”

It is said time and again that no agile methodology or tools are silver bullets.

In order to succeed, teams have to work right (harder and smarter and whatever makes it right) by focusing on what’s important and eliminating everything else.

Agile manifesto also values Individuals and interactions more over processes and tools.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying methodologies are not useful. Indeed, they are but the Project Success depends on people doing right kind of things. Foundational principles matter more than methodology as any given methodology is just an implementation of set of principle it has subscribed in.

And depending upon the context, there are multiple right ways to implement the set of principles, isn’t it?

To get deeper in this subject, read this fantastic article called methodology doesn’t matter by Jesse Fewell from whom I learned Scrum.

So, coming back to the question, no software will assure guaranteed project success but a right team with whichever Scrum software they select is most likely to make the project successful.

You know why?

The right team will ask the right questions including the unpleasant ones and introspect how they are doing. It will make required corrections, Change or remove any of the tools they have been using but are no longer effective and deliver the value.

Remember, Scrum never succeeds or fails, people implementing Scrum may.