In the current times, businesses are undergoing drastic changes. Small business are significantly affected by the coronavirus outbreak. In our recent interview with Dave West (CEO, Scrum.org), he has shared his thoughts about reason for Scrum being so successful, small business solutions, difference between professional coaching and Agile coaching, and a lot more.
Q1. According to you, why has Scrum been so successful?
Dave: Of course it depends on how you measure success, but I think we can at least say that Scrum has changed the face of how teams work, and in particular how software delivery teams work. Rough estimates say that Scrum is practiced by over 18 million people everyday. Scrum.org trains thousands of people each month and if you review Amazon.com for Scrum books you will find over 200 with Scrum in the title or in the description. The terms Sprint, Daily Scrum (originally stand up), Backlog, Sprint Review and Retrospective have become standard terms for teams. And, you can not argue that stuff is being delivered by these teams. In fact, I am sure that the Scrum Teams are somehow involved in software we are using to do this interview.
So, why has Scrum become so successful?
I think there are three parts to that answer:
- Scrum is simple to learn and easy to follow – of course that does not mean that you are embracing the real ideas of Scrum and actually delivering valuable stuff frequently, but every team can easily adopt the structure and basic ideas. That then leads to being able to slowly become more agile.
- The commercial model – I know that many people bemoan that ideas of certification and licensed trainers as “all about the money”, but frankly, without a commercial incentive the ideas would have been written about and then delivered by only a small group of people. Building a commercial model drove adoption, the ideas got into the world and spread. This also allowed for a more consistent delivery approach because those initial trainers all came from the same source.
- The time was right – We are moving out of the industrial age and that approach to product development and project management. Scrum is a perfect fit for the complex world and digital products and projects. Being in the right place at the right time provided a great opportunity, the commercial model and the simplicity to learn scaled that adoption.
Q2. The COVID-19 pandemic is hurting business around the world. Please suggest some small business solutions for pandemic challenges.
Dave: Wow, I am not sure I am the authority on that topic. But I can tell you what we did at Scrum.org and how Scrum and our agile / community approach helped.
At the start of March our in person training business slowed to a crawl as Europe and America both stopped in person events and put the populations into lock down. Our 330+ trainers were faced with a very difficult situation. How could they deliver in person training when you were not allowed to, and when ‘in person’ was a high risk event. It was clear that we needed to pivot quickly to support Live Virtual Training (LVT). Over the last 4 years we had run a series of experiments with this form of training and had already learned a lot. But, we had never pulled the trigger on adding virtual because our in-person training was doing well and our community was super busy with that. This was an opportunity to take that learning and quickly execute on building out and delivering virtual classes. And to do that required trainers to be trained on how to do soand customers needed to be trained. We executed on that rapidly taking advantage of the size of our community and the large number of customers they were connected to. We delivered virtual classes, learned from those deliveries and then updated our materials. We had multiple virtual meet ups to discuss our learning and we had Slack groups capturing real time observations and experiences. I think every business can learn from this experience and apply the three main ideas:
- Focus on your customers – Engage with them, see what they need. Though the pandemic had reduced the number of clients that wanted training, it is still worth talking to them. By connecting with them we quickly understood their needs and learned.
- Engage your channel and community – We have 330+ trainers who work all over the world with many different companies. This gave us a massive reach, and allowed us to ask questions and test ideas rapidly. We did not go to them with solutions, but actually made them part of the solution.
- Be prepared to change everything rapidly – We tried stuff that did not work, and rapidly changed. We used data and metrics to drive learning and everything was up for change.
Q3. Briefly share your thoughts on the difference between Professional Coaching and Agile Coaching.
Dave: When looking at professional coaching the difference is that a Professional Coach is focused on helping an individual fulfill their potential. To deliver on their goals. Agile coaches are focused on helping teams and teams of teams deliver value in an agile way. I recently delivered two webinars on the topic with Maaike Klasen who is a Scrum Master and a ICF certified coach. We discussed the differences in detail and how the two bodies of work are very complementary. Many of the coaching skills such as powerful questions are fantastic when working with individuals. Also the idea of a coaching agreement is valuable as it makes the act of coaching transparent to the team, and other key stakeholders including the sponsor.
The bottom line is that professional coaching means you have a professional certification certificate from a body like ICF. Agile coach does not imply that, but would benefit from the rigor that professional license requires. A good Agile Coach would take advantage of professional coaching and other skills such as facilitation, teaching, mentoring and evening management practices. Just learning Scrum is never enough. You have to use the ideas that it provides as a foundation for lots of skills to help the team, organization and ultimately the customer.
Q4 We hear lots about Flow. Is the future of Agile flow?
Dave: It is clear that understanding the dynamics of how work, ideas and value is generated is crucial for any organization. That was part of the motivation for our work on the Professional Scrum with Kanban class. It shows clearly how the ideas of Kanban and flow can augment any Scrum approach. But I do not think that the future of agile is flow. I think that agility has introduced us to the power of self managed teams, empirical process and a maniacal focus on improvement. The reality is that to deliver value you have to do lots of other things. Things like care about the customer with Design Thinking and Lean UX. Deliver frequently and inspect your work with practices from DevOps, and lots of other things. It is a fundamental tenet of Scrum that you should always be improving, adding ideas to your understanding and trying them out. The great thing about Scrum is that you get the opportunity every Sprint. And the team has the power to decide on trying new things. I would love to value streams, flow metrics and all of the great work of people like Donald Reinertsen to be better understood and used, but I do not think that replaces Scrum but in fact makes Scrum work even better.
Q5. What are the three things you recommend organisations to work on in order to be prepared for future challenges?
Dave: There are lots of things that organizations need to do to be ready for the future, but the most important thing they can do is put in place inspection and improvement loops so that they can inspect and adapt when things change. At the heart of all agile approaches is that inspection loop. But to take advantage of these loops requires a few things:
- Outcome based measurement – Most organizations are focused on motion measurements such as productivity, or cost. Those things are important, but if you want to shape your response to something then you must determine what the outcomes you seek and how you are doing against them.
- Alignment to customers and outcomes – Too often organizations align to the internal system making it very difficult for a team or individual to see the value they are delivering. The most successful teams have a clear line of sight to the customer and outcomes. Being focused on the customer rather than the internal systems or even products provides teams with a future proofing approach as the needs of the customer changes then their products and services change as well.
- Empowered / self organizing teams – It is almost impossible to build a perfect organization for the future. But it is possible to align teams and then empower them to deliver value. Ultimately future organizations need to reframe their model from one of hierarchy to one that provides an environment that supports teams focused on outcomes and customers.
Q6. How do you connect Innovation, Agility and Transformation?
Dave: I think they are all connected. To be innovative requires agility because it is complex and unknown. To be agile requires most organizations to transform. The one mistake is to think that transformation is a project – transformation should happen continuously – It never stops. When you stop changing or trying new stuff, then you are not innovative or agile. Change needs to be the norm. That is why simple process models like Scrum are so successful. They provide some stability when everything else around can change.
Q7. One question you would like us to ask you. Please answer as well.
Dave: What would be the one thing you can do to improve your agile adoption? I think that we often concentrate so much on process, tools, frameworks and organizational models that we forget that agility ultimately is about people working together in different ways to deliver value. The best teams are so much more important than any process or organizational construct. And teams are composed of people who all come with their own experiences, personalities and sometimes baggage. By trying to improve yourself and focus on something you can do to make your team more effective you can ultimately help your team and organization and customers.
For me the one thing I am concentrating on at the moment is listening – I often respond before really listening. I am trying to approach every interaction from a learning perspective rather than a telling one. I believe that if I do this, not only will other members of my team have an opportunity to better share their ideas, but other teammates will also listen more. And, I believe that the world would be a much better place if we listened more and talked less!
But that is me – I ask everyone reading this to ask themselves, “what can I do to create a better environment for agile to succeed?”
Dave West is the product owner and CEO at scrum.org. He is a frequent keynote at major industry conferences and is a widely published author of articles and research reports. He also is the co-author of two books, The Nexus Framework For Scaling Scrum and Head First Object- Oriented Analysis and Design. He led the development of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) for IBM/Rational. After IBM/Rational, West returned to consulting and managed Ivar Jacobson Consulting for North America. Then as VP, research director Forrester research where he ran the software development and delivery practice. Prior to joining Scrum.org he was Chief Product Officer at Tasktop where he was responsible for product management, engineering and architecture. As a member of the company’s executive management team was also instrumental in growing Tasktop from a services business into a VC backed product business with a team of almost 100.