the Agile Beginning with Scrum

Over a decade ago when I was first introduced to Scrum as a customer preferred framework for implementation of a greenfield application, I was taken aback. Having worked with the waterfall methodology for over 6 years then, especially in traditional technology giants it was both obvious and not obvious how Scrum would bring benefit to my team.

The first few Sprints

Although I believed this new learning would help, I failed to see the real benefit until 3 Sprints, until we have achieved a stable velocity, until we encountered changes to the scope, until I felt we were continuously learning, until I felt we are delivering direct business value and until I felt that we as a team were happier. We stopped working in Silos and we started sharing our brain which gave us better solutions, higher trust and more confidence as both individuals and as a team. The challenges we continued to face appeared to become smaller (though technically unchanged).

One of the key reasons why this implementation of Scrum was successful over a decade ago, was simple, the context

The mindset evolves

It is a quite common saying in the agile world

If you continuously do agile, at some point in time, you will evolve into the being agile mindset

After over 10 years of being Agile, I know that this is not always true. Changing the culture or mindset or the psychological aspects of a person, are quite tough unless they are open to it.

The level of acceptability of change might not be the same across everyone in the team

The IT services world

The IT services world has changed dramatically since the advent of the pandemic. Until few years ago, all the fancy methodologies and jargon were meant for customers, including some principles like trust, value, self-organisation, etc. Is this changing now? Yes, No, Maybe!!!

I see the mindset change has started, but it would take years more to implement anything.

People are afraid to implement change in their teams, but ready to preach changes for others.

If you do not practice what you preach, how will you ever understand what the other person is going through?

Retrospektive

Organisations can enjoy true (and economic) benefits of Agility only when they start looking are the ecosystems and not just teams.

The best strategy to fight against bureaucracy in organisations is by making things transparent