[Agile and Scrum are not what you think!] — What I just learnt #1
Yesterday, I was watching one video of Robert C. Martin aka Uncle Bob (and by the way I learnt and I am still learning a lot from this guy!) and during his video he talks about Agile and Scrum and how there is no such a thing as a failed sprint!
In an Agile team, the manager, the Product Owner or the Scrum Master are never supposed to tell the development team that they did not finish the sprint or that the sprint was a failure because they were not able to respect their sprint engagement.
Why you’re asking?
There is no engagement in Agile. The sprint planning is not a promise.
On the sprint planning, we (developers) do not make any promises or engagement. In fact the sprint iterations, are here, to allow the team to grow and improve their development. If there are engagement and deadlines that force the development team to finish imperatively before the end of the sprint it would mean that the team is not Agile!
Then the team manager should never mention the “unfinished sprint” as a “failed sprint” but should rather talk about :
Good, we were able to have these 75%, we will finish the rest on the next sprint, thank you all for your work!
From sprints, after each iteration, we always get data (even if absolutely everything goes wrong). From this data, we will be able to learn and gain from it. So, if on a sprint we get to do the third of what we have planned, we will only ask for a third on the next sprint.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that:
Agile allows you to mesure how much you get done, it does not allow you to dictate how much you will get done.
I am pretty sure if a manager, Product Owner or a Scrum Master read this article, they will going to tell me:
But in Agile, we constantly improve the team and ourselves. This is why when we face a problem, instead of finding the culprit, we need to cover each other’s back and find a better way to avoid facing the same problem another time.
If you liked the article, it would be cool if you clap 👏👏👏.
