Scrum Only Is No Guarantee for Success — You Need to Add Your Own Uniqueness to the Framework
Agile approaches merely enable you to find your own best way
Complex product environments call for your own unique approach
Agile approaches merely enable you to find your own best way
Every organisation is unique. They have their own mission, unique products, own people, and unique customers. Organizations that act within the same niche have all the reasons to stand out. They need to outdo their competitors with a unique product experience, lower prices or anything else that sets them apart.
With this open door in mind, it always bewilders me how organisations copy-paste popular approaches. Do you recognize any of the below? Or do you have other examples?
“Did you see that awesome Spotify video about their engineering culture? Let’s copy that!” (what does it matter that we aren’t a music-streaming company. Or that Spotify never worked like this themselves).
“SAFe has a solution with a place for all our current people and processes. We only need to apply that model on top of our structure!” (we can adopt agile without changing ourselves!)
“Atlassian has a Jira template that allows us to start with Scrum immediately. We don’t have to think for ourselves!” (let’s ignore Scrum is a framework to manage complexity and use it as a delivery approach instead).
There’s no template to generate value in your unique complex environment. If that were the case, then others would already have done what you aim to do! You need to find your own unique way.
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Finding your own unique way — with some help
Thankfully, you can find your own unique way with help of enabling approaches, models and frameworks. Here are some examples:
Scrum is a lightweight framework to generate value in a complex environment. It is a canvas for you to create your own approach.
The Lean Startup method helps you rapidly uncover a business model's validity.
The unFIX model helps you to organize around a value stream.
All of these provide handles to uncover your own best way to organise to make an impact. But only when they are used in the right context. You can’t use Scrum or Lean Startup as mere delivery frameworks. You can’t use unFIX to create silos.
Many other approaches have been used incorrectly in the past and present. Even Waterfall, or SAFe. Scrum is nearest to my heart. So I will continue this article in a Scrum context. But many things I discuss are just as applicable to the other standards.
Before you adopt Scrum, I advise assessing if you actually need it. You may already have your own best answer to your challenges already. You may not have a need to fulfil, and no problem to fix. That’s good for you. Because with your own approach, you are already set to amplify your uniqueness.
Few are in this luxury position that they don’t have problems to fix. The organisations that need a nudge in the right direction should not automatically look for Scrum. Because Scrum works in very specific environments only. Here are a few vital prerequisites:
You produce products and/or sell services
Your environment is complex
You need people with different skill sets working in teams to create your product or service
Only if these prerequisites apply, Scrum may be a solution for you.
Scrum isn’t rigid
Many may have the impression that Scrum is prescriptive and rigid. But it is lightweight and purposely incomplete. It provides a lot of liberty in how to do the work. It has three accountabilities, 5 events, 3 artifacts, 5 Values and some additional rules. The Scrum Guide is very much about what you wish to achieve with these. It does not specify the how.
For the record, here are a few things that many believe are Scrum, but aren’t:
Story points and planning poker — Scrum doesn’t prescribe if and how you do your estimating;
Velocity — Scrum doesn’t tell you how you are going to assess your delivery speed;
Commitment to finish all the planned items — Scrum Teams commit to goals, not to a detailed plan;
The Product Owner doesn’t tell how the Developers do their work — Developers are in control of how they work and by when;
The Scrum Master isn’t the manager — a Scrum Master is a leader who serves the self-managing team;
Sprints don’t have to be two weeks — can be any length up to a month;
Jira isn’t mandatory — Scrum doesn’t mention how to manage your Product Backlog and what tool to use;
The Sprint Review isn’t a status meeting — It is a moment to verify assumptions based upon new insights from the new product Increment (and any other news);
The Sprint Backlog isn’t set in stone — Developers can change it any time if needed, in collaboration with the Product Owner;
I could come up with a sheer endless list of things that are perceived as part of Scrum, while they aren’t. The moment I realized all of this was truly liberating for me.
This leaves a lot of room to find your own best way, like:
You can choose your own Sprint length
You can choose your own way to estimate items if needed
You can decide if and how to do refinement of items
You can determine if you work virtual/physical or hybrid
You can choose how to engage with your stakeholders
The Scrum Master chooses the best approach to assist the team and organization
The Product Owner can determine the best way to manage the Product Backlog, set Product Goals and order the items
Also here, these are only examples of the freedom you have within the Scrum framework. Scrum isn’t rigid. It is made rigid by the teams, coaches and/or management. This is not Scrum’s fault. But harmful to its effectiveness.
Be unique
Can you be unique when you follow in the footsteps of others? When you copy/paste a framework to the exact details because it appears to work elsewhere?
I don’t think so.
Organizations need to embrace their uniqueness. They can do this by finding their own approach to making a difference. From the ground up, or with help of a framework like Scrum.
Because Scrum is lightweight and largely non-descriptive. It allows teams to create their own approach. To be unique.
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