Just over 10 years ago, Simon Sinek delivered an unforgettable Ted Talk "How great leaders inspire action", which currently have 50 million views. Simon talks about the "golden circle" and the questions Why? How? What ? that is briefly about finding the purpose of what you do.
A colleague at my previous workplace tipped me off about Simon's Talk and I still remember the feeling after 18 minutes of watching; “It was so obvious! Always answer Why before you start doing something. ”
What is your answer to "Why Scrum"?
Have you thought through the use of Scrum properly? Do you choose Scrum because that's how you think you should work in IT. Or do you opt out of Scrum because it's an IT thing (*)? And if you work with Scrum, why did you choose to follow the Scrum Guide 100%? Or why did you choose to pick only parts of the framework?
I have realized that my "Scrum-Why" has changed over time. In the beginning, the answer was less well thought out. Or rather, the more I have taught, worked with and discussed Scrum, the more I have learned and my response has evolved. Today I would answer:
“I think it is valuable to start from the Scrum Guide because then I, my colleagues, our customers and our organization will learn to work agile”.
For me, Scrum is about developing an agile approach and an agile mindset. I am convinced that when working groups in, for example, finance, management, HR and marketing also take up the agile, our organizations will feel better and become more profitable.
Realize the value of Scrum
If you are still hesitant to use Scrum, I would ask you to start with an experiment. In Scrum there are five "events". One of these is called retrospective. It is a meeting with the purpose of evaluating how we work and creating a plan for improvements. Run two retrospectives four weeks apart and read the Scrum guide a couple of times in the meantime.
If you want concrete tips on how to carry out a retrospective, you can contact me. Or read Cecil Goldstein's article Sprint Retrospective Irrespective. The text goes in depth with retrospective and gives examples of two good exercises that can be used.
Once you have completed your second retrospective, the experiment is complete. Evaluate with the team. Was there a value in running retrospective? If you see the value, I recommend that you and your team take a Scrum course together to get more tools to work with. Back to Simon Sinek. If you have not contributed to the 50 million views, I think you should grab a cup of coffee, sit down comfortably and click here.
(*) Once upon a time, Scrum was considered solely for software development. Both Scrum and the outside world have developed and now there are Scrum courses and Agile courses for you who work in other industries / areas.
By Björn Lindell