The house that Scrum built
Following on from the two-piece series One reason why your Agile implementation is failing and Another reason why your Agile implementation is failing, I started writing up a practical real-life account of how my team has moved to ScrumBan (which will come soon), when I began to digress into a diatribe about the meaning of the word framework which follows Scrum but is oft forgotten.
When is a house a home?
In order to get to the punch line, we first need to quickly remind ourselves what Scrum actually is.
It’s a set of principles, loosely described (not prescribed) to offer guidance for how to deliver quality and value more effectively in software development.
Scrum is not a silver bullet.
Scrum is not the answer to everything.
Scrum is not a one-and-done affair.
Scrum is not a copy-and-paste effort.
Scrum is not ubiquitous.
Scrum ceremonies are an example of items you can put into an agile team’s agenda to facilitate different needs a team has — planning, review, reflection, updates.
They’re not vogue meetings for no reason — that’s just your implementation.
But… and it’s a BIG B. U. T. — if you compare these examples with the statements above, you quickly realise that the way in which you do these things, and the types of things you actually do, can be very much tailored to the needs of your team(s).
Search online and you’ll find dozens of different ways that teams have come up with to conduct these ceremonies, which is testament to them being guiding principles rather than prescribed doctrine.
In the past year alone, I’ve gone through four retrospective formats; three sprint planning and review formats; implemented, ditched and re-implemented demos; done stand-ups remotely and in a “project” room; had a physical kanban; projected a digital board; and had no board at all when the room’s TV was stolen and moved to our Director’s office!
We’ve also gone from iterative, to two-weekly Scrum with an eight-weekly lifecycle to a four-weekly lifecycle, to ScrumBan (next story), to separating out our code that’s dependent on another system’s lifecycle with our core application and we’re going to trial a straight-to-live lifecycle — I AM SO F*CKING EXCITED!
Note: none of this is to say that you must change your processes this often — if you’ve got something that works then stick to it! There are many contextual reasons to why we have moved around so much, but there was always a need.
Making the frame work
This is the key to a “framework”.
There’s no right or wrong answer — there’s no “answer” at all!
A framework is a shell — a hollow and empty space brimming with potential.
If you put a frame around your ways of working, it’s still hollow without the knowledge, courage, mind, heart.
A hollow framework is useless without context, adaptation, tools, techniques, process, and, yes, rules. But good rules, not those pesky corporate bad rules.
This may be one of the reasons that organisations struggle with implementing Agile. Putting up a frame can build the shape of a house but implementing a framework without heart, mind, courage, doesn’t make it a home, or agile.
In order to realise that potential you need to figure out what you’re going to do with the framework and how you’re going to get there.
You need to build a home within that house.
And how do you do that?
Well, you stuff the house full of crap that has meaning to you (and your team).
All of those Christmas jumpers, fiddly ornaments, stupid holiday fridge magnets, the giant pint glass your wee cousin got you for your birthday, your granma’s rocking chair, the quilt handed down through generations.
All of these things have meaning and they are there for a reason.
When looking to fill a Scrum framework with meaning it’s about fulfilling the needs of your team in order to help facilitate their empowerment to deliver value.
Duena Blomstrom and Leda Glyptis have written about two separate themes that I think beautifully work together with this analogy.
Duena talks about not being able to have the WoW without the WoT (ways of working / ways of thinking) and Leda talks about bringing your whole self to work.
The framework is the ways of working, but the soul, the substance, the meaning, is when you fill that house with ways of thinking (context, meaning) and bring your whole self to work (the courage, the heart, and the mind to do agile), and it becomes a home.
So, what?
Take a minute, step aside, bring your team along, and look into your ways of working and ask yourself if you’re doing these things because that’s the way you’ve learned that they be done, or because that’s the way that they should be done.
Guarantee most of you will find some room for change and improvement.
Even if you are doing things on purpose and with purpose, try experimenting with the formats — what you did yesterday, what you’re doing today is not the only way to do a stand-up and there might be a better way out there for your team.
Think of it like redecorating old and tired rooms — they still serve a purpose, but that’s not to say they couldn’t look, feel, or function better.
Never stop learning, never stop changing.
Fill that house with purpose and on purpose and make it a home.
