Scrum is a framework for delivering value that requires a certain environment to manifest all of its benefits. Getting on board with the theory behind Scrum is easy. Actually putting it into practice? Sometimes that’s different story.Implementation of the method is neither quick, nor easy and as every investment it introduces some work and costs at the beginning. In order to get a proper returns from it, take a look at these 10 steps into consideration – When Scrum implementation doesn’t go according to plan it’s common for practitioners to place the blame on the theory rather than take responsibility, themselves. In truth, making the transition to Agile is anything but a quick and easy fix. As with any change, it’s one thing to say you’re ready for it and another to actually put in the hard work it takes to see it through.
Step 1 – What is Scrum?
Huge companies and tiny start-ups – everyone wants to be agile, everyone wants to work in Scrum. But what does it actually mean? Scrum is one of the most popular frameworks for implementing agile. So popular, in fact, that many people think scrum and agile are the same thing. (They’re not.) Many frameworks can be used to implement agile, but scrum has a unique flavor. It’s also a great way for teams to get started with agile. Scrum is often classified as Agile’s ‘project management’ method and yet looks incompatible with the traditional Project Manager role. The Scrum method defines only 3 roles: Scrum Master, Development Team and Product Owner (more details are at the bottom of this post). Many of the responsibilities of the traditional Project Manager are covered by these other roles:
Process focus (Scrum Master)
Task allocation (Development Team)
Managing issues and dependencies (Scrum Master/Product Owner)
Requirements prioritisation (Product Owner)
Procurement (Product Owner)
Risk management (everyone, via sprint planning, demos and retrospectives)
Step 2 – Why do I need Scrum?
Given you’ve done your homework, now it’s time to think about Scrum in your company more seriously. If it’s an investment, do I need it? Will it make my development better? Will it fit to my organisation? Scrum, as all agile methods, works perfectly in an empirical environment, where you can’t measure, predict or estimate everything – and so you even don’t try to do so. Therefore, if you wish e.g. to grow your predictability, Scrum might not be a solution for your problem.
Scrum is a great risk management tool because it significantly decreases the chances of the project delivering the wrong solution. However, ‘requirements’ risk is only one class of risk. Many other sources of risk exist and need to be managed in a more traditional way: identifying, logging and actively managing away.
Step 3 – Organisational culture
Agile development means self-organisation, trust, focus on people, growing vision together, responding to change… Not every company wants it all out of their control. Before you make any moves find out the type of your organisational culture and ask experts whether it fits agile or not. If it does, great. If not, the cost of your investment will be higher.
Step 4 – Treat it as a project
Rolling Scrum out is a complex organisational endeavor. It should be treated as a project of a high risk. And actually we know a good framework for such activities. It is called Scrum. Use Scrum to implement Scrum in your organisation. Find a Change Owner with a clear vision and a Change Backlog, find a cross-functional self-organisaed Change Team that will deliver you Scrum in sprints and find an Engagement Manager (Scrum Master) that will facilitate the process and educate all the rest.
Step 5 – Be brave!
Once you identify a gap between your vision – Scrum – and the current state, be brave to accomplish all your goals. You may find out you need to change a half of your processes or get rid of a half of your structures. Taking a step back at this moment won’t help.
Step 6 – Don’t forget about change management
Any time you change something in your organisation, many people resist. It’s human, it’s natural, it always happens. Don’t forget to learn how a proper change management can help you survive these uneasy times.
Step 7 – Listen to the people
Listen to the people – they’ve been there, they’ve done that. They know. Assuming that you have Executive level buy-in and their confidence, any top-down activities have a higher probability to succeed comparing to bottom-up ones, but it works only if the voice of people is seriously taken into consideration. Processes are for people – let them tailor the procedures to fit their needs.
Step 8 – Make all your steps transparent
Implementation of Scrum is a long journey. Some people will leave your deck, some will join you in the middle. Always show the entire map to everybody and don’t hesitate to communicate your vision, goals, accomplishments and further steps.
Step 9 – Think outside the box
“My colleagues did X and it worked for them.” Cool, but it doesn’t mean it will work for you, too. Look for similar cases, listen to the folks more advanced in Scrum than you, but instead of copy-pasting their solutions blindly, experiment with them to find out if their fit your particular situation or not.
Step 10 – Inspect & adapt
Your Scrum implementations goes in a different direction than you originally planned? No problem! A complex change means you discover hidden paths and issues while going. Inspect and adapt whenever you find something new. At least once a sprint!
Three essential roles for scrum success
A scrum team has a slightly different composition than a traditional waterfall project, with three specific roles: product owner, scrum master, and the development team. And because scrum teams are cross-functional, “the development team” includes testers, designers, and ops engineers in addition to developers.
The product owner
Product owners are the champions for their product. They are focused on understanding business and market requirements, then prioritising the work to be done by the engineering team accordingly. Effective product owners:
Build and manage the product backlog
Closely partner with the business and the team to ensure everyone understands the work items in the product backlog
Give the team clear guidance on which features to deliver next
Decide when to ship the product with the predisposition towards more frequent delivery
Keep in mind that a product owner is not a project manager. Product owners are not managing the status of the program. They focus on ensuring the development team delivers the most value to the business. Also, it’s important that the product owner be an individual. No development team wants mixed guidance from multiple product owners.
The scrum master
Scrum masters are the champion for scrum within their team. They coach the team, the product owner, and the business on the scrum process and look for ways to fine-tune their practice of it. An effective scrum master deeply understands the work being done by the team and can help the team optimise their delivery flow. As the facilitator-in-chief, they schedule the needed resources (both human and logistical) for sprint planning, stand-up, sprint review, and the sprint retrospective.
Scrum masters also look to resolve impediments and distractions for the development team, insulating them from external disruptions whenever possible.
Part of the scrum master’s job is to defend against an anti-pattern common among teams new to scrum: changing the sprint’s scope after it has already begun. Product owners will sometimes ask, “Can’t we get this one more super-important little thing into this sprint?” But keeping scope air tight reinforces good estimation and product planning–not to mention fends off a source of disruption to the development team.
Scrum masters are commonly mistaken for project managers, when in fact, project managers don’t really have a place in the scrum methodology. A scrum team controls its own destiny and self-organises around their work. Agile teams use pull models where the team pulls a certain amount of work off the backlog and commits to completing it that sprint, which is very effective in maintaining quality and ensuring optimum performance of the team over the long-term. Neither scrum masters nor project managers nor product owners push work to the team (which, by contrast, tends to erode both quality and morale).
The scrum team
Scrum teams are the champions for sustainable development practices. The most effective scrum teams are tight-knit, co-located, and usually 5 to 7 members. Team members have differing skill sets, and cross-train each other so no one person becomes a bottleneck in the delivery of work. Strong scrum teams approach their project with a clear “we” attitude. All members of the team help one another to ensure a successful sprint completion.
As mentioned above, the scrum team drives the plan for each sprint. They forecast how much work they believe they can complete over the iteration using their historical velocity as a guide. Keeping the iteration length fixed gives the development team important feedback on their estimation and delivery process, which in turn makes their forecasts increasingly accurate over time.
