Agile Coaches' Corner The ‘Why’ Behind Scrum with Steven Granese
In today’s episode, Dan Neumann is joined by Steven Granese, the Vice President of the Transform Practice at AgileThought! As the VP of Transform Practice, Steven leads a team of the top Agile Coaches, DevOps Consultants, and Product Consultants in the United States.
Together, Dan and Steven will be exploring the ‘why’ behind Scrum and examing the question of why organizations and teams should be using Scrum, in the first place. Steven often sees that the clients he’s working with lose focus on the ‘why’ behind Scrum or don’t even know what it is, to begin with! With these clients, there will be a lot of focus on the mechanics of Scrum and the framework itself (i.e. the ‘how’) without a deep understanding of why they’re using Scrum, what problems they’re trying to solve with Scrum, and what their purpose is for working with sprints with iterations. In this episode, Steven addresses how organizations can shift their perspective from a ‘how’ mentality to a ‘why’ mentality as well as many of the misconceptions and incorrect uses of Scrum (so you can be sure to avoid them!)
Key Takeaways
Why it is important to focus on the ‘why’ behind Scrum rather than the ‘how’:
The ‘why’ helps the team and organization understand what problem they’re trying to solve with Scrum in the first place
Focusing on the ‘how’ (such as: “How do we execute Scrum?”) leads to organizations applying Scrum incorrectly
Understanding the ‘why’ leads to a deeper understanding of why they’re using Scrum, the problems they’re trying to help solve with it, and what their purpose is in working with sprints and iterations
The ‘why’ behind Scrum and where it makes the most sense to use:
In conditions of high uncertainty
In environments of high uncertainty
Incorrect ways Steven sees Scrum being applied:
As opposed to building a working increment of their product, getting feedback as they go, and adjusting their sprint-to-sprint plan based on the feedback (which is the heart and soul of the ‘why’ behind Scrum), they’re not allowing feedback into the process — therefore losing the ‘why’ in the process
Breaking up work into milestones instead of sprints
Treating the sprint demo like a sales pitch and not letting the customer experience the demo for themselves
Techniques and tips for achieving the ‘why’ behind Scrum:
Recognize that the market moves fast, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the world, and that the customer’s needs are changing very quickly
Match the way you think about your work and deliver your work to that uncertainty (which allows you to move faster)
Stop overplanning and just start working
Put increments of the product into the customers’ hands and start getting their feedback
Get back to the basics and simply focusing on two weeks at a time
Measuring the right metrics (“You get what you measure”)
Don’t just use Scrum to measure the team; use it to measure the flow of the entire system
Focus on getting really quality feedback from your customers
“Begin with the end in mind.” — Stephen Covey
Through receiving high-quality, real feedback from a sprint demo, really listen to the feedback and adjust the plan and fix problems accordingly
Understand where the market is headed (and differentiate between what the customer wants and what is actually needed) by building something and putting it in their hands to get feedback
Fail fast to learn fast
Build in thin slices and get feedback as you go — you will learn a ton about what users actually need and also save time by not building unneeded features
Misconceptions about the Scrum framework:
That Scrum is really about product delivery (“Scrum is just as much about discovering the solution as it is about delivering the solution” — Steven Granese)
Scrum and other Agile frameworks are seen as a delivery mechanism (as opposed to a mechanism to discover what the customer actually needs)
That you have to use Scrum (if you already know exactly what you need to build and there’s no uncertainty then there’s no need for the iterative nature of Scrum)
Mentioned in this Episode:
Steven Granese’s Book Picks:
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