How elements from Scrum can improve decision making and company culture

Scrum and Agile is often associated with software development. But more recently, I’ve been seeing it somewhat differently. I’ve been viewing certain elements of Scrum that could be used to improve the everyday runnings of teams on areas such as decision making and improving company culture.

But let’s remember that Scrum is a guide, not a rulebook of sorts and it’s not a substitute for careful consideration and thinking. But Scrum is a tool that is available to any team, can be used to resolve issues quickly, and can be scaled up/down to meet needs. I tend to think of it as a framework that can be extended indefinitely to meet your specific needs.

Throughout my time in work, there are a few things that have stood out to me when it comes to businesses:

• Culture
• Prioritisation
• Reacting to issues and change
• Communication

And these areas can all be improved with elements from Scrum. I’ve seen people describe Scrum as a delivery framework that’s aimed for Lean production (for removing waste and impediments) from an agile perspective (which is more focused on customer collaboration). But it’s also worth while to note that Scrum is a decision framework that’s aimed for good decision making (optimising value and reducing risk) based on stakeholder feedback (empirical data).

In this post, I want to explain how the events and artefacts from Scrum can be used to improve a company’s decision making and culture.

Sprint

Sprints can be described as a grand wrapper for everything in Scrum. Normally, Sprints are fixed length and tend to last between one and four weeks, and allow enough time to do meaningful work.

Sprints are a good way of communicating to stakeholders what work has been done, which can play a role in making decisions. Sprints can also give a team direction on what they want to deliver in a set time frame.

I like Sprints in being open on what everyone is working on, if there are any blockers that need to be resolved and so on. The daily standup offers the chance for everyone on the team to share their updates and ask for help if they need it, and allows stakeholders to attend to hear what progress has been made.

Retrospective

I find retrospectives are a great opportunity to check if you are building the right team, to hear opinions, and a way to get honest and candid feedback. And retrospectives are very easy to set up, from using a physical whiteboard to running them in tools such as Miro, you can find a way that suits you to run a retrospective.

A good thing you can do is set actions from a retrospective, so that everyone knows what the outcome of the retrospective was and it shows that everyone’s voice was heard. This plays a part in building the right team.

If you want to ensure that you are reacting to issues and change, what people think of the culture and how priorities are communicated, retrospectives are the best place to discover ways on how things could be improved.

Out of all of the events and artefacts from Scrum, I think retrospectives are the most valuable source for improving culture.

Product Backlog

A collection of work to be done by the team, that is ordered by business value. It’s important to note that anyone in the team can add to the product backlog at any time. This goes hand in hand with the product vision, the “North Star”, for creating items in the product backlog.

I find that the product backlog is a great way in communicating visually what the long term, mid term and short term work items are. Plus, the product backlog is a way of improving communication effectiveness and provides a place for anyone on the team to make suggestions on how to improve the product.

The product backlog and sprint work well together and having an organised backlog in priority order will help with decision making. If the backlog is organised, the team will know what needs to be worked on next.

Culture

I’ve witnessed plenty of different work cultures, and each one has it’s own set of strengths and weaknesses. But how can culture be improved and prevent a positive culture from drifting to blame culture? I find that Scrum creates a values driven culture, and these values acts as an anchor.

Some examples of these values in Scrum are:

• Openness
• Respect
• Courage
• Focus
• Commitment

Empiricism is how we make changes and validate their worth.

Applying Scrum and mastering it

From my experience, Scrum is something that can be easy to pick up and implement in small increments, but it is difficult to master.

There are four steps to using Scrum; learn, apply, reflect and perform.

Learn

When it comes to learning about Scrum, you can take an online course, read books, watch videos and so on. You could even become a certified Scrum master.

I cannot stress enough that learning about Scrum is an important first step.

Apply

When you feel ready and have enough information, it’s time to apply your knowledge. You can form a team to apply Scrum, experience Scrum by being a member on a team or watch another team use Scrum in a Sprint.

Applying Scrum provides a wealth of knowledge and experience, which gives you a great opportunity to reflect on what you’ve learnt.

Reflect

I’d suggest running a retrospective to reflect on the experiences and challenges you and your team faced while running a Sprint. This provides an excellent opportunity to learn lessons and create actions on how to improve for the next Sprint.

Give everyone on the team to share their opinions on how they’re finding Scrum.

Perform

After reflecting, take time to implement the changes the team agreed on and change your approach. You can also learn from others during this step

I find that it’s important to implement changes so that it shows to members on your team that you are taking steps to implement feedback they gave, and your team feels that their opinions are valued and respected.

And the cycle begins again…

At this point, you start the cycle again. You may come across something you learn from a course, that you will want to apply, get feedback from your team and implement new changes based on feedback you receive.

And remember, if your team doesn’t like Scrum or wants to use another framework like Kanban, that’s fine as well.

Wrap up

Taking the time to try new frameworks to improve decision making and culture is something that should always be respected and welcomed, and it shows to your team that you are wanting to improve on how things are.

There are plenty of books and courses available which can provide you with knowledge about Scrum. If you are interested in Scrum, I can recommend Scrum Inc for training and if you want to see the original website for Agile development, you can view it here. There is also the book written by Jeff Sutherland and J.J. Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time.