Adoption of Scrum

The Scrum Framework is a great framework to use for most teams, however, like most frameworks, it also has its limitations. In this section, we explore when there are complimentary practices, beliefs and behaviours to support a Scrum adoption, and when there are not.

The Work

The nature of the work can indicate which framework is most suitable, with Scrum really working well for teams that need to provide some creativity with their work and inject some innovation into their project. The use of regular feedback loops such as the use of Sprints, Daily Scrums, Sprint Reviews and Sprint Retrospectives for example, allow a team to pause, inspect what has been done and adapt accordingly.

Scrum works well for product development where the focus is on the creative content of the work and the impact of the feedback loops is most beneficial to inspect and adapt the product, and inspect and adapt the process used to produce it.

However, when the nature of the work is repeatable and flow based with high volumes of simple and similar items per day such as a support help desk for example, that receives multiple tasks per day, then Scrum may be limited.

If we did say a one-day Sprint with a Sprint Planning event in the morning and Sprint Review and Retro in the afternoon, then the outcomes of the Sprint Planning may well be out of date before we get to lunch.

Hence, an alternative Agile framework may be more suitable such as the Kanban Framework for example, which has a strong focus on improving the efficiency flow of the work.

The Team

A team that is confident in who it is, how they work together and how they solve problems tend to have a much easier time adopting Agile approaches and Scrum. They take on the challenge as an experiment to evaluate and determine if it will work for them and in their context. Teams like this tend to be more objective rather than emotive in their approach to trying new things such as how they work together.

Teams that have a strong sense of community with a strong support network also tend to do well when adopting Agile for the first time. They work well to support each other as they figure out this Agile thing and see if it is for them.

Teams that are anxious and always on the back foot, tend to be more emotive about an Agile adoption, and may well feel threatened by this changing landscape. In a sense, they have low confidence about their abilities to succeed and so a change to their working practices may well amplify their anxieties leading to resistance. Arguably a move to Agile and Scrum may well help these teams to become more successful, but it may not be a smooth transition with additional help, reassurance and support needed from the Scrum Masters and the leadership to help their teams through a transition that may be long, arduous and plagued with pitfalls and bear traps.

The Leadership

Leaders who frantically focus on the tactical details, overuse a commanding management style, consider people as “resources” and a means to achieve a KPI on their annual performance objectives, may find it difficult to trust and empower a team to be self organizing.

For Agile and Scrum to be effective, a leader may have to take a number of risks within the larger organisation. They may have to provide an ecosystem around a team, protect and defend them from the organisation and hold back their anxieties in order to use a coaching style of leadership with their teams as a more effective leadership style.

The biggest risk of all may well be to empower a team to make their own decisions. They may still want a goal and objective to head for to provide the vision and setting as to why they are doing the work, but still have the freedom to determine how they can do it.

Great Agile leaders are ones who support their teams through protecting and enhancing their ecosystem and environment, removing the red tape, resolving impediments on behalf of the team, and interacting with the team on a daily basis to understand their blockers, impediments and needs.

The Organisation

Organisations that have an inherent competitive culture that is divisive and performance based will tend to have difficulty in adopting Agile and Scrum based approaches, as the whole notion of collaboration may be a foreign concept.

These organisations tend to like the outcomes of Agile such as getting to market faster and being more effective, but then have difficulty in supporting self-organising behaviour in teams for example, as they are so used to driving towards their goals and working harder, rather than working smarter.

Organisations that have low confidence in their capabilities and tend to focus on managing performance and their processes, may be too risk adverse to adopt Agile and Scrum effectively. Their passive aggressive culture does its best to eject the Scrum Team or foreign body from the organisation as the auto immune response kicks in to reject anything that strays from the norms.

Organisations that are used to putting their people first and cultivating their input may have a seamless transition to Agile and Scrum, as they might already be practicing many of the core principles and values. Confident organisations that know who they are, what their 10 year plan looks like and adopt Agile and Scrum not as a destination but as a means to reach a higher goal, tend to have a higher degree of success with a higher probability of evolving beyond their expectations.