What if Scrum had no rules?

Peter Stevens@peterstev

DC Scrum User GroupJuly 20, 2014

Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Which best describes the attitude towards Scrum in your company?

Follow the rules!

Live Inspect and Adapt!

To what extent do the rules of Scrum make sense to you?

WTF!? Scrum is a natural!

Why?

Imagine! It’s 1993 and you are Jeff Sutherland…

How do you identify successful patterns?

Outliers

We can also use our own experience to identify outliers!

I believe agreements are stronger than rules

I believe agreements are stronger than rules

Let’s explore great projects together

1. Tell & listen to stories of great projects 2. Identify those projects most worthy emulation3. Identify the patterns in those projects

Could we agree to do something similar?

Can we agree to respect the timebox?

Share your best experience…

• Groups of 6

• Timebox 1:30 / person = 9 minutes total!

Remember that face!

and Regroup!

Share your best experience…

• Groups of 6

• Timebox 1:30 / person = 9 minutes total!

Remember that face!

Find the project you’d most like to emulate!

Let’s hear the best projects!

• The 3 most popular projects

• 1:30 / per person

How many of you…

Told the story

of the project you are working on today?

Could you…?

Agree with your colleagues

to make this project your best project?

What would you be agreeing to?

What are the characteristics of these great projects?

• How would you describe the purpose of the project?

• How many people were involved?

• What skills did they have?

• How often did they produce something that worked?

• What were the characteristics of the leadership?

• How did people work together?

• How would you describe the motivation of the people involved?

• What factors enabled the motivation?

• What was the relationship to the beneficiaries of your work (customers)?

Could you agree with your colleagues…

To implement these patterns?

I believe

If you implement these patterns

you get something that looks a lot like Scrum

What are the attributes of these successful projects?

Technical • Short feedback loops• Running systems early• Clear Acceptance Criteria /

Tests• Good tools and equipment• Risks handled early• Early and regular

integration• Thorough Test Suite• Automated Test Suite

Management• Clear Vision & goals• Clear priorities• Clear decisions• Clear responsibilities• Management Support for the

Teams, People & Project• Focus• Close cooperation with the

customer• Motivated, Activated &

Empowered Team Members

What are the patterns that Scrum implements?

Deliver regularly something that works

Inspect and adapt at regular intervals

A single voice speaks for the customer / user / stakeholders

A small, interdisciplinary team solves the problem

Great performance comes from continuous improvement

Management helps and knows when to stay out of the way

What if…?

We consider Scrum

as collection of working agreements?

How would you recognizea good change?

result of an agreement to be better

inspect & adapt more often

Q&A

?

Vote!

• Agreements are more powerful than rules! • Vote to elevate the status of agreements in

the Scrum Guide

• http://tinyurl.com/ScrumAgreements

SP1

SP2

SR

DSDS

Day 1

Daily Scrum

Day 2

Day n…

Sprint

VisionBacklogRefinement

What if, we considered Scrum as a series of opportunities to ask powerful questions?

Work

Work

Work

Retro

Increment

Done

(CC BY SA) Peter Stevens

SP1

SP2

SR

DSDS

What is the best possible step

forward?

How can we accomplish these steps?

How? What help do we need? What’s slowing us down?

What have we accomplished orlearned? Day 1

Daily Scrum

Day 2

Day n…

Sprint A container to limit ourselves to setting

reasonable medium-term goals. What can we reasonably expect to accomplish by the end of the sprint?

Vision

How will our efforts make the world a better place? Who needs our product? Why? Why should we build it?

BacklogRefinement

What could we do to get us closer to our vision? What small steps could take us nearer to our goal ?

What if, we considered Scrum as a series of opportunities to ask powerful questions?

Work

Work

Work

Retro

Increment

DoneHow do we know a step was successful? How do we ensurethe quality of our work? Howdo we know that what wasdone in the last sprint is still done in this sprint?

How can we work more effectively?

(CC BY SA) Peter Stevens

“Let’s make this project your best project!”

• Peter Stevens– scrum-breakfast.com– saat-network.ch

@peterstevpeter@saat-network.ch