Contrary to popular belief, Scrum is not an IT project management method. It's a team game based on empiricism. The Scrum framework maximizes the success of organizations in the face of their challenges: Covid, economic competition, carbon neutrality, or rehumanization of the workspace, etc.
It is therefore time to clear up this misunderstanding.
Scrum, a team game rather than a method
A method is a formal procedure. It takes standardized elements as input and processes them in clear steps to obtain the expected deliverable. The chocolate cake recipe illustrates this perfectly. If you don't have chocolate, it doesn't work.
Covid, loss of meaning at work, economic competition, digital transformation, environmental, energy and security issues, our organizations are facing more and more unforeseen events! In other words, there is no more chocolate and the results cannot be predicted.
Self-management and empiricism towards common goals
Coming from rugby, Scrum means scrum. Scrum and rugby have in common that they have rules and self-managed teams using empiricism to achieve their goals. Scrum and rugby also share the fact of evolving in complex, unpredictable environments. Anything can happen on a field, and no magical method guarantees victory.
Rugby and Scrum provide a framework allowing continuous improvement collaborative play.
Scrum is defined by a 13-page document, the Scrum Guide. On the cover page there is a clue to its contents: “The rules of the game”. Because, yes, Scrum is a team game.
A game that allows teams to address all types of complex issues such as the creation and evolution of vehicles, digital products, consumer electronic devices, marketing campaigns, human organizations, ecological models or artificial intelligence models.
The French market rediscovers Scrum
In France, with Scrum, we are mainly at the simulation stage. It's a bit like when you learn to surf. We repeat the movements, dry, on the beach. It's an important step, but it's not surfing. Taken individually, employees and managers want real surfing!
When supporting a renowned financial institution in achieving its economic objectives, it turned out that the culture in place was a real obstacle to its success: fear of blame, taboo of emotions, loss of meaning at work, lack of trust and micromanagement were considered normal. These toxic obstacles for the organization that collective awareness has made it possible to identify and remove.
Collectively, our habits die hard. We mostly see that the traditional approaches of the last century are still there, disguised with fashionable Agile-sounding terms: squad, daily, or MVP.
Scrum, like surfing or rugby, requires working on our values: courage, focus, commitment, respect and openness. They make it possible to deliver in the short term, to learn from the market… and to reduce the amount of unnecessary work.
The world is speeding up, and many organizations today are up against the wall.
Having trained nearly 2,000 people in Europe, and supported dozens of organizations, we can clearly hear that a new melody is emerging among French organizations. The status quo is crumbling. Speech is freed. What if we tried?
For what types of issues?
Hardware, special forces commandos, marketing, digital, industry, employee engagement, environmental footprint, medical research, finance, data, defense… all these subjects are complex. And yet, Scrum manages them.
Some organizations have understood this and are improving their results on the subjects that matter to them:
- acceleration of time to market (TTM);
- reduced product ownership costs;
- rehumanization of the workspace;
- increased customer satisfaction;
- reduction of technical debt;
- improvement of employer attractiveness.
When Saab AB delivers a new, improved version of its Gripen fighter plane every three weeks or Tesla is able to improve its models in production more than twenty times a week. Scrum is not far away.
Scrum results are measured in terms of business and collaborative impacts.
Rediscover Scrum with those who practice it
Scrum is best understood when you experience it yourself. Collaboration is like being in love, until it happens to us, it's hard to imagine what it's like.
The training presented on the official Scrum.org website is experiential. Participants explore together what psychological safety, trust, self-management and empiricism are. From a sum of individuals, they forge teams.
Recognized field experts
Scrum.org training courses are facilitated by Professional Scrum Trainers (PST), a community of 360 professionals around the world whose field experience has been noted by Scrum.org. They have the highest certifications: PSM III and PSPO III. Their incarnation of Scrum values and their ability to grow teams means that they have been individually invited to join this community of international experts to advance Agility.
Scrum.org training courses are created and maintained by Ken Schwaber, co-creator of Scrum, and the PST community. Participants benefit from the latest version of international advances in this area. The contents are state of the art.
It is common in organizations that everyone has their own version of Agility. If having your local dialect has its charm, it is also largely unproductive for addressing the issues together. Without common vocabulary, we cannot understand each other.
Scrum.org certifications make it possible to build this common understanding around official Agility texts such as Scrum Guide. This common understanding makes it possible to address our organizational challenges, and also to benefit from the experience of millions of teams around the world to accelerate.
Scrum on!
