8 Ways to Incorporate Agile Scrum Methodologies in Projects
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Your vision is that when new projects start, you would have better organization so that they start launching closer to expected dates.
The dilemma is you and your team are always working on multiple projects, and due dates pass you by. You are noticing that projects not only take longer than they should, there are also too many things spread between too many people, and the structure just isn't there. Unforeseen things come up, and with so many people on the team, it's just too difficult to respond and adapt like you would think they could. You are thinking to yourself, I gave the instruction and the project brief, so what is the issue? How can we make this go smoother?
The case is a consultancy business where projects are often delegated in a top-down style.
Let’s say you are a smaller consultancy business with 40 employees. Projects come in, and often each project is delegated with specific sets of requirements, and each employee has their piece to contribute. This sounds straightforward. However, you find that people are often getting sidetracked with other tasks, projects are often worked on by several people, people start working on new projects before the first is finished, issues arise that weren’t planned for, and it really throws a wrench in, people may be stuck waiting on other departments to complete other pieces pushing projects into the six months to a year range for completion, and it’s not easy to adapt.
The solution is to consider a new mindset. Consider Agile Scrum.
What is Scrum? Scrum is a subset of Agile. It’s a mindset and process that allows you to be more responsive, plan more accurately, communicate effectively, update priorities as needed, adjust goals while not losing the strategy, have a bit more control, and finally, improve the timescales.
Scrum allows the team to be presented with a vision or purpose with inspiration. The idea is a small team who all have the skills to be able to complete the project is assembled and works with each other from start to finish. The members must be competent, they must self-manage, and trust each other to make solid decisions. You don’t have to wait for other departments, for example, to get pieces completed; all of the work is done within this small team. This allows you to not have the team working on several projects at one time. There are studies proving that working on multiple tasks leads to people working at 25% as productive as they could be. When you have small, focused, competent teams working on the projects, they will be completed more effectively.
Fabian Schwartz refers to projects and business as a poker game where you cannot plan and predict every move and issue that may come up just as you wouldn’t be able to see the other players' cards in a poker game. Scrum is best for the high complexity and uncertainty and where the cost of change is low. This means that you can use this method for highly involved projects where it's not a big deal when changes happen along the way as in development. Schwartz has been quoted as providing an example of a sports team and noting how players on the field have to be able to think and respond to the game vs. stopping the play and asking their coach what move they should take next. After studying this methodology more in-depth, I think this image sums up this concept. There is a level of trust in the team required for this to work, but there are more serious issues if you don't trust your team.
Commitment, focus, openness, respect, and courage are the five values that the team members have to keep top of mind. In order to form a team, consider keeping it small so that adapting and moving can be quick, Schwaber and Sutherland recommend 10 or fewer people, and you need one Scrum Master, one Product Owner, and Developers, who all work to complete Sprints, which should be 30 days or less.
Key Scrum Terms
1. Sprint: Manageable projects, they are 30 days or less, and you don’t start a new one until the first is completed. Sprints contain the discussions, planning, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective. It’s important to remember that you don’t let quality decrease, you don’t make changes that would prevent the goal from being reached, you do make improvements to the Product Backlog as you need to, and the scope can be reviewed as needed as more details come into play.
2. Sprint Planning: All members present, think if a sprint is 3 weeks, then this meeting is a kick-off lasting 3 hours. At this point, the Product Owner should come to the meeting with the Product Backlog prioritized, discuss the items, and the group will estimate the required workload to complete.
3. Daily Stand-Up/Scrum: A 15-minute daily meeting where you may talk about what has been done, roadblocks, and what’s next in order to keep the Sprint moving. You may have heard these called standups, where you literally stand for the length of the meeting. However you do it, the goal is to address the items mentioned and to think of it as a time for a team huddle at the same time each day.
4. Iteration Review: All team members present, lasts half-hour to an hour at the end of the Sprint. This is the time to celebrate and demo the accomplishments.
5. Sprint Retrospective: At the end of Sprint, use this to determine the most useful changes that can be made for the next Sprint to allow for higher effectiveness.
6. Scrum Artifacts: This is what the Product Goal, Sprint Goal, and Increment or Definition of Done are, and transparency of these is key.
7. Product Backlog: List of the work the team is to complete.
More About the Agile Scrum Roles Within the Small Team
The Scrum Master works on coaching the members to manage themselves, create the most value possible, he or she removes blocks in the project, and makes sure that the environment is helpful, positive, and on time.
The Product Owner is held accountable for managing the Product Backlog as well as and developing, creating, and communicating the Product Goal, Product Backlog, and making sure members have visibility and understanding of the Product Backlog.
Developers are often associated with software; however, as Scrum may be used in any industry, Developers are anyone who is working on completing an Increment in a Sprint.
Three Pillars in Agile Scrum
These pillars represent a way of thinking. The idea is that everyone knows what is going on, keeps checking in on how it's going, and knows that it's ok to change direction as needed to reach the end goal.
1. Transparency: Process and work being done have to be seen among those who are doing and receiving the work.
2. Inspection: In this sense, this means that the progress and goals have to be reviewed often and consistently to find the issues right away.
3. Adaption: Once issues are found, changes must be made right away to get back on track.
To Summarize How You May Implement Agile Scrum Into Your Business Process:
1. Identify your small team of 10 or fewer and the Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Developers.
2. Think of Sprints or projects in terms of 30 days or less to make them more manageable.
3. Try to focus the team on these shorter stints to avoid multi-tasking and to ensure you are completing projects.
4. Consider how you can provide inspiration in delivering the project brief to the team vs. the more typical top-down delegation.
5. Think about how you can remove the roadblocks each day to keep your team moving while you are allowing their great ideas to come to fruition.
6. Use Daily Scrums to frequently review progress and make changes as needed to meet your goals for the Sprint.
7. Go into planning with the mindset that as a poker game, you do not know the unforeseen items and that they will be expected, and you will need to reprioritize as needed.
8. Look back at the end of projects to find the takeaways to improve going forward. In the end, identify one thing to implement in the next sprint that improves the process.
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Consider incorporating some of these ideas into your next project and comment as to how it went!
Written by Nicole Hullihen, July 3rd, 2021
Recommended references to learn more about Agile Scrum.
Agile Uprising. (2020, May 10). Your Scrum Playbook- It’s Poker Not Chess with Fabian Schwartz. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdGxKoulhDM.
Breteau, J. (2016, Nov 10). 7 Reasons Why You Need Agile (Scrum) for Your Business Transformation. LinkedIn. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-reasons-why-you-need-agile-scrum-your-business-julien-breteau/.
Doshi, H. (2016, Dec 4). The Three Pillars of Empiricism (Scrum). Scrum.org. Retrieved from https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/three-pillars-empiricism-scrum.
Ghannad, A. (2019, Jul 13). Creating High-Performance Teamwork with Scrum. The Ghannad Group. The Transformative Leader Podcast. Retrieved from https://theghannadgroup.com/podcast-episodes/ttlpodcast-082.
Radigan, D. (n.d.). Stand-ups for Agile Teams. Atlassian Agile Coach. Retrieved from https://www.atlassian.com/agile/scrum/standups.
Radigan, D. (n.d.). Have We Met? Atlassian Agile Coach. Retrieved from https://www.atlassian.com/agile/scrum/ceremonies.
Schwaber, K. & Sutherland, J. (2020, Nov) The Scrum Guide [PDF]. Retrieved from https://scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2020/2020-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf#zoom=100.