Scrum is a surprisingly easy framework to understand, yet its concepts can be difficult to put into practice. This post lists three steps that ensure organizations that wish to embrace Scrum, do so correctly.

Understand how to BE Agile

David Marquet’s definition of leadership is one I like to promote within my teams: “embedding the capacity for greatness in the people and practices of an organization and decoupling it from the personality of the leader”.

An enabler paramount to this mindset is Agile. Agile is a set of 4 values and 12 principles that invariably nurtures collaboration, empowers people to be self directed and focuses on increasing the value of the work that comes out of an organization.

It may take deliberation to detach oneself from habits and think differently about how to craft work with a focus on outcomes and business impact. My next post breaks these values and principles down. In the meantime, it is worth taking the time to read through and internalize these Agile concepts as they will help you correct any behaviors within your organizations that do not align with your desired ways of working.

Understand how to BE Agile through Scrum

Now you understand Agile as an ethos, let us move on to how you can help people find their groove. This is where Scrum not only connects with, but is supposed to synergize, Agile.

We are obviously not referring to the method to restart play in Rugby. It is equally important to bust myths such as “Scrum is when you stand up for 15 minutes every day”. Scrum is not about blindly following rituals, it is a framework within which you apply the Agile Values and Principles. If you focus on doing Scrum by the book without being Agile, you are “faking” Scrum and will likely create problems for yourself and your teams. Rather than adherence to rules, Scrum’s bedrock is on getting the outcome that the organization wants.

The benefits of BEING Agile through Scrum include:

.. having utmost clarity about your and your team’s purpose
.. collaborating as a cohesive unit with your team towards a clearly defined, common and valuable business outcome
.. cooperating to break this shared vision down into realistic and prioritized milestones
.. picking one milestone at a time and accomplishing it within a short duration
.. being confident that your current work output adds the most possible value to the desired outcome
.. moving ever closer towards achieving your business outcome as it builds on previous outputs
.. obtaining cyclical guidance and validation from peers, customers and stakeholders
.. pivoting your work accordingly in iterative and innovative measures, mitigating risk along the way
.. and doing all of this under the minimal amount of meetings required.

The essence of Scrum, driven by the Agile principles, is to iteratively self improve in order to generate market value.

Understand how to DO Agile work by applying Scrum

If the aforementioned paragraph enticed you to implement Scrum within your organization, I suggest you take further steps to learn it. The good news here is that the three sections within this post have just initiated you to the concept of “Sprints”, albeit in a reading rather than work format: concise passages that should be examined in sequential order and not skipped until fully comprehended. This infographic serves as a gentle follow-up introduction to Scrum’s rules, roles, meetings and commitments.

If you’re looking for an intuitive yet comprehensive appreciation on how to apply Scrum, Valentin Despa provides two courses that, should you trust and follow Valentin’s guidance, are the perfect preparation to become either a certified Scrum Master or a certified Product Owner should you want to pay for Scrum.org’s respective Level 1 assessments.

Feel free to also reach out to me as you progress through your learning so we can share experiences.