Scrum for Beginners

When Scrum Works?

Last week I wrote a post called “When Not To Use Scrum?”

Objective of that post was to highlight some of the situations in which Scrum may not be that effective. Nothing is perfect in this world; Scrum is no exception.

It doesn’t have to be.

Most important thing is to know when Scrum works and when it doesn’t and make the best use of it when it works. As I always say, “Scrum is a vehicle, not a destination.”

So here come some situations that are favorable for making a Scrum implementation successful.

  1. Scrum implementation in your organization has got conscious top-management buy-in.
  2. Top management would like to take the cost of implementing “pull” systems over “push” systems. Such costs may be huge in the beginning.
  3. Hiring process is updated to hire people who are strong team players. If a person is great individual contributor but not a team player, s/he is not the right fit for a Scrum team.
  4. Performance Appraisal systems are updated to evaluate team performance rather than individual performance
  5. Scrum teams are made of people who are level 3+ according to Maslow’s need theory who would inherently love to self-organize.
  6. People have high respect for one another regardless of their different, individual opinions or point of views.
  7. People work on one and only one project at a time.
  8. People “pull” the work, no manager is required to “push” the work and get things done by constant follow up.
  9. People understand the definition of “done” – and they commit to it. If they need external forces (aka “manager”) then it is unlikely to work.
  10. Organization’s value system is based on doing right kind of “less” compared doing generally “more” in all that they do.
  11. People are ready to rise beyond their individual title such as Technical Leader, Business Analyst or Senior Engineer and work as a team member who is driven internally, not by any external thing such as title.
  12. People work at a sustainable pace – they have good work life balance and most important, they value it and consider organization as a valued partner in this.
  13. The person playing the role of “The Product Owner” works on only one project and always owns the priority of the features to be developed.
  14. Everyone involved understands that Scrum is a mind-set not a methodology.

Scrum works when people implementing it make it work. Remember, Scrum never succeeds or fails; people implementing Scrum do.

When Not To Use Scrum?

Without a doubt, Scrum is my preferred vehicle in the world of software development journey. However, there are situations where Scrum may not produce the best possible results.

In order to get best out of Scrum, you must understand and continue expanding your understanding about the situations when something other than Scrum might produce better results.

In the moment of choice, you need to choose the right thing for the organization you’re serving. That’s what remarkable Scrum advocates do.

Here are some of the situations where Something else but Scrum could be a good choice:

  1. Either top-management does not believe in Scrum and does not want to believe in Scrum.
  2. Using Scrum does not make sense for the 3-5 years of organizations goals. Scrum implementation has an initial high cost which is not practical for a business to bear.
  3. When the “schedule” of the work is more or less fixed, driven by competition and cost of changing it is very high versus cost of losing sustainable pace.
  4. Performance appraisals are based on individual “heroic” contributions rather than team contributions.
  5. Teams are made of people who are level 1 or level to according to Maslow’s need theory.
  6. People don’t always respect other team members especially when they have difference of opinions.
  7. Business needs their people to work on multiple projects at the same time.
  8. People work for long, stretched hours because of business needs or individual skill issues. They spend most of their time in the office with inferior output. They crib about it and consider organization the culprit.
  9. People want to work in their comfort zone and like to be micro managed or they have been micro managed for long and they have got habituated to it. (It can change for sure but the cost of changing that mind-set may be too high).
  10. It does not make business sense to focus on “less” given the domain, competition, market conditions and/or business purposes.
  11. Having a fancy job-title matters to the key people and cost of making such people uncomfortable is way high than the possible benefits Scrum may provide.
  12. Product Owner role is assumed amongst many team members – Engineers often talk about “what” is the right thing to do more rather than “how” to get it done. Organization thinks it is okay.
  13. Some people think Scrum is a methodology, some think it is a project management framework, some think that they are doing scrum when they are doing daily scrum meetings or creating product backlog.
  14. Any of what is mentioned in this enlightening, Scrum-crazy post is true.

I can go on and on but key is to understand that Scrum can be successful only when the top management sees value in it, it is aligned with organization’s purpose the organization can afford to sacrifice short-term benefits offered by other systems in favor of the greater good that Scrum may provide.

It is important to understand that Scrum is not a single point answer to everything. It’s a vehicle, not the destination.